N n

Back when most of my work was in nanoelectronics, I named one of my Sun
workstations enano. It was a pun.

N

Nematic. A liquid-crystal phase with orientational order and no positional
order. If you ignore molecule orientations, the phase is a liquid. Usually in
this context, molecules are treated as if they had the symmetry of rods:
orientation is characterized by the direction of the long axis of the molecule.
(Strictly speaking, it is possible to have a further orientational ordering,
associated with rotations of molecules about their major axes. In practice,
however, phase diagrams usually involve transitions to different kinds of
ordered liquid crystals, such as smectic and cholesteric, as well as to
crystalline and liquid phases.)

\n

Newline escape sequence. See the LF entry for
equivalences, the B (programming language) entry
for etymology.

When people say ``as free as the air,'' they're talkin' nitrogen, 78%,
and that can go for as little as pennies on the cubic foot.

Gallium Nitride (GaN) has been used to create blue
lasers, so now [I think I entered this entry in 1995] full-color flat-panel
displays and area illumination based on compound semiconductors are
anticipated. When people talk about the danger of material shortages that
might result, they're not talkin'bout nitrogen.

n

Nonideality factor in semiconductors. Simple semiconductor device models
(like the Ebers-Moll model) typically contain voltage-dependent factors of the
form exp(qV/kBT),
arising as ratios of Gibbs factors. The fit of measured characteristics can
often be substantially improved by inserting a fudge factor in the argument of
the exponent: exp(qV/nkBT).

Although this is essentially a phenomenological correction, it does have some
theoretical justification, in a slightly more complicated approximation than
that which yields the standard Ebers-Moll equations. If transport across the
depletion region is modeled as taking place in two stages, then
n = 2 is obtained as a limiting case. Usually the two
theoretical approximations serve as bounds on the empirical fit: the
nonideality factor lies between 1 and 2. For good Si devices, n in the range
of 1.1-1.3 provides a good fit for high voltages, and 1.6-1.8 fits well for low
voltages. (The transition between these regions is moderately sharp -- taking
place over less than half a volt around 0.65 V -- so there are regions
where constant-n is a useful approximation.)

The large-n limit is ohmic behavior. As the doping on the semiconductor
side of a Schottky is increased and the space-charge layer correspondingly
shortened, quantum tunneling comes into play and is said to raise n.
This is not so mysterious: a highly-doped Schottky (i.e., a metal
contact to highly-doped semiconductor) is simply (precious word, that) an ohmic
contact.

November. Not an abbreviation here, just the FCC-recommended ``phonetic
alphabet.'' I.e., a set of words chosen to represent alphabetic
characters by their initials. You know, ``Alpha Bravo Charlie ... .''
The idea behind the choice is to have words that the listener will be able
to guess at or reconstruct accurately even through noise (or narrow
bandwidth, like a telephone). November is a good choice.

N

Number of neutrons in a nucleus.

N

Number of anything. E.g., number of elements in a sample population,
number of elements in a finite universe (in the statistical sense of the term),
number of terms in a sum.

NA

Avogadro's Number. The number of whatever in a mole.
6.022137 × 10²³ .

Until well into the twentieth century, calculations used Loschmidt's number
instead, to get around the fact that the atomic hypothesis was not universally
agreed to have been conclusively demonstrated.

NA

N-acetyl-Aspartate. A brain chemical.

.na

(Domain name extension for) Namibia. In 2006, Namibia became the
world's largest maternity ward so that all of Angelina Jolie's children could
be born in the third world.

You'd suppose the adjective form corresponding to Namibia would be
Namibian. But FWIW, they have a bi-weekly (issues on Tuesdays and
Fridays) Afrikaans-English newspaper, based in Walvis Bay, called the Namib
Times. It was founded by Paul Vincent in 1958 as a bi-weekly trilingual
newspaper. He sold it in 2002 when his health started failing. At the time of
his death in 2004 it was the country's second-oldest newspaper.

NA

Narcotics Anonymous. On the pattern of
that obscure organization ``Alcohols Anonymous,'' I
imagine that this must be a twelve-step program for drugs that have come to the
terrible realization that they are narcotics. For the benefit of
anonymous Francophone narcotics, here's a
link to Narcotiques Anonymes (Québec).

N.A.

National Association.

NA

Network Analyzer.

NA

Next Address.

NA

NorAdrenaline.

NA, N.A.

North America.

NA, N.A.

Northanger Abbey. Title and one of the main locations of a novel by
Jane Austen.

In chapter 5 of William
Cobbett (1925), G.K. Chesterton makes an observation about NA that it
was very characteristic of him to make:

We should think it rather odd if a profiteer had a country
house that was called The Cathedral. We might think it strange
if a stockbroker had built a villa and habitually referred to it
as a church. But we can hardly see the preposterous profanity
by which one chance rich man after another has been able to
commandeer or purchase a house which he still calls an Abbey.
It is precisely as if he had gone to live in the parish church;
had breakfasted on the altar, or cleaned his teeth in the font.
That is the short and sharp summary of what has happened in
English history; but few can get it thus foreshortened or in any
such sharp outline. ...
The romantic reactionary at the end of the eighteenth century
might not often find the Bad Baronet in a castle, but might
really find him in an abbey. The most attractive of all
such reactionaries, Miss Catherine Morland, was not altogether
disappointed in her search for the Mysteries of Udolpho.
She knew at least that General Tilney lived in an abbey;
though even she could hardly have mistaken General Tilney
for an abbot. Nor was she wrong in supposing that a crime
had been committed by that gentleman in Northanger Abbey.
His crime was not being an abbot. But Jane Austen, who had so
piercing a penetration of the shams of her own age, had had a little
too much genteel education to penetrate the shams of history.
Despite the perverse humour of her juvenile History of England,
despite her spirited sympathy with Mary Stuart, she could
not be expected to see the truth about the Tudor transition.
In these matters she had begun with books, and could not be expected
to read what is written in mere buildings and big monuments.
She was educated, and had not the luck to be self-educated
like Cobbett. The comparison is not so incongruous as it may seem.
They were the four sharpest eyes that God had given to
the England of that time; but two of them were turned inward
into the home, and two were looking out of the window.
I wish I could think that they ever met.

NA, N/A, n.a.

Not { Applicable | Available }. When you need both senses, make a
distinction by using either d.n.a. (does not
apply) or, if applicable, n.d.a. (no data
available), or both.

National (US) Academy on Aging. You might not want to graduate from this
academy, but it looked like the academy itself might expire. At least its name
had been looking badly. The academy survives with the help of a couple of
lexical prosthetics implanted in the name: see NAAS.

(To ``look badly'' is not a comment on visual acuity but an expression meaning
to ``look bad.'' It seemed to be common back in the 1960's and 70's, mostly
among the frail elderly. Presumably it was an overcorrection among those who'd
been taught that verbs are modified by adverbs, without recognizing the
accepted exception of copula and seem-type verbs. Other common expressions of
this sort were ``look poorly'' and ``feel badly'' (i.e., feel sympathy
or guilt). Of course, the -ly was added by these
kindly elderly folk because they knew that the -ly changes adjectives into
adverbs.)

NAA

N-Acetyl Aspartate. Found mainly in neurons, and measurable by proton
magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

National Amnesia Association. I think someone forgot to create this
organization. So this entry shouldn't be here (or
here).

NAA

National Apartment Association. A
landlords' association. Many of the local affiliates are named something like
Apartment Association of [your area here], but there are also the AOBA in metro DC,
various PMA's.

NAA

National Aphasia Association.
``[A] nonprofit organization that promotes public education, research,
rehabilitation and support services to assist people with aphasia and
their families.''

a*pha*sia (uh-fay'-zhuh) n. An impairment of the ability to use
or comprehend words, usually acquired as a result of a stroke
or other brain injury.

National Archery Association. The national governing body for US Olympic
archery. It changed its name to USA
Archery and or US Archery, but never came up with a good abbreviation, so
one still sees ``NAA'' a lot, in use as if it abbreviated the new name.

NAA

National Amnesia Association. I think someone forgot to create this
organization.

NAA

Neutron Activation Analysis. The way this works is, you stick the sample
in a nuclear reactor, where it is bombarded by neutrons. Some fraction of the
nuclei absorb a neutron, or maybe two, and become unstable (i.e.,
radioactive). Light elements typically decay by emitting an electron--that is,
a neutron emits an electron and becomes a proton, the atomic number (Z) increases by one while the atomic mass number (A) stays constant. (The
atomic mass
decreases by a small amount.) Detection of the electrons gives information
about the kind and relative numbers of atoms originally in the sample.

National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People. When the NAACP was founded in 1909, ``colored people''
was a euphemism. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and
``colored people'' has drifted across the semantic spectrum to become an odd
sort-of dysphemism. I've heard black people use it facetiously. You have to
give the NAACP credit (backbone points) for not changing the expansion or at
least sealing the acronym, let alone
changing the name altogether.

At its annual convention in 2007, the NAACP held a mock funeral to ``bury the
N-word.'' The mock funeral was itself mocked as a sign of the NAACP's
irrelevance and miredness in the past. That year also, the NAACP cut a third
of its staff to close a $3 million budget deficit.

Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes.
``Serving the [UK] Services.'' Also written
naffy. ``HM Forces' official trading
organization.'' A private not-for-profit organization that
``provide[s] community
support to members of the British Forces and their families,'' bringing
``retail and leisure services to some strange and exotic places around the
world.'' Evidently something like a British USO, but
they make it sound like the PX. Until January 1,
1921, it was the Navy and Army Canteen Board.

National Association for the Advancement of Perry Mason. Name of a Raymond
Burr fan club and its quarterly newsletter, based in Berkeley, Calif. Like
Burr, it's gone now. It was run by Jim Davidson for a decade.

NAAQS

National (US) Ambient Air Quality Standards.

NAAS

National Academy on an
Aging Society. Well, it's true that the vast majority of individual
Americans are getting older, and it's true that the average age of Americans is
increasing, so in that sense the society as a whole is aging, but the latter
facts do not follow from the first one. If there's an up-tick in fertility or immigration, will they have to
change the name aging?

``NAASO, The Obesity Society is the
leading scientific society dedicated to the study of obesity. Since 1982 NAASO
has been committed to encouraging research on the causes and treatment of
obesity, and to keeping the medical community and public informed of new
advances.''

NAAVB

Maybe you were thinking of the NAABV, or maybe
that's what you actually heard.

NAAWG

North American Air Working Group. Something set
up in 2002 by the CEC Council. The CEC
(Commission for Environmental Cooperation) was created by the North American
Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) which
is a part, or a dimension or wing-strut or something, of
NAFTA. The NAAWG is charged with providing guidance
to the Council and facilitating future cooperative work on issues related to
environmental air quality.

North American Bengali Conference (Banga Sammelan). An annual
conference held in North America to celebrate Bengali culture, with
``international'' (i.e., subcontinent-based) and ``domestic'' (North
American) performers. For many years it's been held the three days from Friday
through the first Sunday in July. They don't seem to have a regular website,
but for at least a few values of yy, the URL for the year 20yy has been
<http://www.nabc20yy.org>.

NABC's, still often informally called
``Nationals'' even by many
Canadians, are held thrice annually.
They're called the Spring, Summer, and Fall NABC's, and they open in March,
late July, and late November -- at different cities in the US and Canada.
The 2006 NABC's were successively in Dallas, Chicago, and Honolulu. This list
illustrates two decided tendencies in the siting that are apparent from the
venues for 1997 to 2012:

The ``Spring'' NABC (sometimes technically in late Winter) is
generally in an inland city. (Vancouver, in 1999, was the only solid
exception.)

Every year since 2006, and infrequently before then, the Fall
championship has been scheduled for a major city that is (a) a seaport
or (b) close to Disney World (which is on Seven Seas Lagoon).

Well, they do try to spread them around. The ACBL website serves lists of
NABC's past and
future.

The main sessions of play (afternoon and evening) usually run 10 days, from a
Friday until the second following Sunday. In addition to the major
championships that give the tournament its name, lesser games are offered that
are suitable for all levels of player; there are morning and midnight games for
those who want even more. Consequently, these are the largest
bridge tournaments anywhere, except for those
involving simultaneous play at many sites.

North American Bengali Conference
(Banga Sammelan) 2007. It's the twenty-seventh Banga
Sammelan, the weekend of June 29 to July 1, at
Cobo Hall in Detroit. Conference hotels (with
negotiated special rates) are the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center,
the Courtyard Marriott (across Jefferson Avenue E from the Renaissance Center),
Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites in Downtown Detroit, and the Doubletree
Hotel in Dearborn. When you call for reservations, particularly if you want to
stay at the Renaissance Center Marriott, make very sure they understand that
it's for your 2007 conference. The 2008 Spring NABC
(North American Bridge Championship) is scheduled for March 6-16 in the
Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center.

As I've noted somewhere, if you mention ``Tolstoy'' to a Russian or
Ukrainian, he's apt to reply ``which one?'' as if Leo (i.e., Lev) had
not earned one-name default status as much as Shelley has. I haven't
encountered the same thing with Vladimir Nabokov, but just in case: the author
of Lolita,Pnin,Pale Fire, and many other works was
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977). His father, involved in the
1917 provisional government, was Vladimir D. Nabokov (1869-1922).

(Canadian) National Advertising Benevolent Society. ``The
National Advertising Benevolent Society is a non-profit organization that was
established to assist people in the advertising industry and related businesses
who need help due to illness, injury, unemployment, substance abuse or
financial difficulties.''

NAC

Network Access Control.

NAC

Network Access Corporation.

NAC

NitroAromatic Compound. NAC's are an important environmental contaminant
at old military sites, with the principal NAC being
TNT. TNT is known to be
toxic (mutagenic) to many plants and animals. It's truly a miracle substance.

(US) National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. Nobody can ever remember
what this acronym stood for. In fact, when it was set up by congressional
legislation in 1915, it was just the Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. The
``National'' was just conventional.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union put into orbit the world's first
artificial satellite. It was an 83.6-kg (186-lb.) metal sphere named
Sputnik (Russian for `traveler'). Apart from going around the planet
once every ninety-six minutes, it performed only two memorable actions: send
out a lonely-toy beep, and send the West into a hysterical panic.

It is probably fair to mention, in advance of further details, that the US
space program suffered a number of embarrassing failures between those
Octobers, but that they were the failures not of NACA but of the unprepared
Navy program initially selected to carry out the effort.

NACA

National Association for Campus
Activities. ``[A] member-based, not-for-profit association composed of
colleges and universities, talent firms and artists/performers, student
programmers and leaders, and professional campus activities staff. We are a
clearinghouse and catalyst for information, ideas and programs promoting a
variety of college and university activities, from leadership development to
student programming.''

North American Council of Automotive
Teachers. It ``is the ONLY international organization devoted to teachers
and trainers of automotive technology and its related fields.'' It was
difficult when we were first starting out. You can't imagine how hard it can
be to get even the simplest idea into a cylinder head, or ``block head'' as we
used to say. They never made skulls that thick. Open 'em up and it's obvious
that they're basically just ``air heads.'' Ain't nuthin' under the hood.
There was constant pressure to ``pass them along.'' If we held them back a
year, it would discombobulate the whole assembly line. Things have gotten a
lot better since they started putting computers in there.

National (US) Accreditation Commission for Schools and Colleges of
Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Original name of ACAOM.

NACUBO

National Association of College and
University Business Officers. ``National'' in the sense of ``American,''
uh, by which of course I mean US. There's also a Canadian analogue called
CAUBO/ACPAU. Not too
surprisingly, the issues that face college and university business officers
differ substantially among different countries. Enteric conditions seem to be
more uniform, and the corresponding organization for food services
administrators (NACUFS) uses a more
expansive notion of ``national.''

That reminds me, in the Summer of 2005, the Royal
Shakespeare Company is touring with Euripides' Hecuba. They're
doing an English version by the poet Tony Harrison. Vanessa Redgrave stars.
The last offering in a season of tragic plays, it should have been the climax.
Reviews have been tepid. I'm not surprised. In this self-absorbed century,
people -- even actors -- have a very selective ability to empathize.

NACUFS

Gesundheit! Oh look, there's an expansion:
National Association of College and University
Food Services. ``National'' here means ``the US, Canada, and abroad,'' but
the six defined regions cover the US, Mexico, and most provinces of Canada.
(Mexico, the US, and Canada are all nations.) There's also an
independent organization called CCUFSA.

NACUFS sponsors an annual ``National Culinary Challenge,'' and the winners
receive American Culinary Federation medals. The
six finalists are required to prepare four portions of an original hot
entrée, with side dishes and sauces to balance the plate so that the
center of mass is within one centimeter of the center. Okay, I added the words
after ``plate.'' Contestants (``culinarians'') have seventy-five minutes to
prepare the meal and present it to a panel of ACF judges. In the 2005
competition, it had to include lamb.

No { Apparent | Acute } Distress. Emergency-care usage. I suppose that
if distress were acute, it would be apparent, but implication doesn't run the
other way, so NAD and NAD are not synonyms. Oh dear.

National Association of Evangelicals.
The largest conservative Protestant group in the U.S. Founded in 1942. Motto:
``Cooperation without compromise.'' On March 6, 2000, the NAE changed its
bylaws to allow member denominations to also belong to the liberal NCC. See related information at the NRB entry.

In 2006, not even 80 months after the NCC co-membership decision, headlines
read ``Rev. Ted Haggard leaves National Association of Evangelicals after male
escort claims he paid him for sex for three years.'' Now, without reading the
sordid article accompanying this headline, I can hazard a guess who was the
``he'' that paid, and who the ``him'' that got paid. (``Allegedly''!
``Allegedly''!) But it's not as clear as it would be if they were of different
sexes. Things would be a lot clearer 99% of the time if we simply assigned
everyone randomly at birth to one of 100 distinct grammatical
genders, and referred to them by 100
corresponding distingishable third-person singular personal pronouns. Slime
molds do something like that.

Sponsored jointly by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) and the Aerospace and Electronics Systems
Society (AESS).

``NAECON is the premier national forum for the exchange of specialized
aerospace electronics and related information. It includes a strong technical
program featuring high-quality papers and tutorials, extensive exhibits of the
latest technology and applications, and discussions of the latest trends in the
area. The theme of this year's conference is `Technology --A
Bridge to the Future' [some people
think that just because the president of the US
uses a meaningless phrase, it's eloquent] and emphasis will be placed on
technology development and application of new technologies. NAECON should be
of interest to all military, commercial, and academic members of the aerospace
and electronic community.''

NAEP

(US) National Assessment of
Educational Progress. It shows taht we is stoopit. But suppose you
already knew that. Would the NAEP tell you anything you didn't know?
Possibly. Education research is usually pretty bad stuff, and the NAEP is the
stuff of ed research.

There are, first of all, methodological questions. A school's participation in
the NAEP is voluntary, and half the schools selected to participate choose not
to. In other words, what we know about the participating schools is that they
were in the half of schools, roughly, that chose to participate. After you've
controlled for the controllable factors like SES
(socio-economic status), race, etc., you still have a skewed sample. If you
try to compare poor districts with rich, for example, on the ``low-SES'' side
of the comparison you probably have a relatively small fraction of schools
whose administrators for some reason feel confident or competent enough to
allow participation. On the ``high-SES'' side, you probably have a more
representative sampling of rich districts. Thus, you compare
best-of-the-worst, putatively, with typical-of-the-best. In effect, you weaken
the apparent or poorly ``measured'' effect of all factors that really are
effective.

There are also political reasons to be wary of NAEP data. Here, for example,
is a footnote (#73, p. 219) from a chapter in The Black-White Test Score
Gap ed. Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Pr., 1998). The chapter (6) is ``Why Did the Black-White Score Gap
Narrow in the 1970's and 1980s?''

Dramatic changes starting in one particular year also raise the possibility
that changes in sampling procedures or participation rates could be distorting
results. One conceivable ``explanation'' of the trend data is that black
adolescents' scores are overestimated in 1988 for some reason. When the
1986 NAEP results for reading looked inexplicably low, the Department of
Education suppressed them, even though focused investigations never found
methodological problems that might explain the decline. The 1988 scores
for black 17-year-old students look abnormally high, and the black reading
decline after 1988 would be negligible if this single data point were
eliminated. However, this is not true for thirteen-year-olds, whose reading
scores show a steady decline after 1988. Errors that affect only blacks and
not whites in 1988, affect blacks of all ages in 1988, and affect black
thirteen-year-olds after 1988 appear unlikely.

(My emphasis.)

Here are some excerpts from a Heritage Foundation Report entitled Critical
Issues: A New Agenda for Education, ch 3 ``The Growth of the Federal Role
in Education,'' by Eileen M. Gardner. The relevant text concerns programs
under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Title I provides federal aid to counties for
compensatory (remedial) education for educationally disadvantaged students from
low-income families. Gardner writes:

Studies assessing the effectiveness of Title I consistently have shown that the
goal of the program has never been achieved. Yet Congress steadfastly has
resisted efforts to eliminate it. By 1969, however, clear signals were
reaching Capitol Hill that Title I was failing to live up to its expectations.
Results of congressionally mandated evaluations showed that federal budget
officials did not view the program as cost effective; educators complained of
red tape, excessive regulations, and unwieldy bureaucracy; and parents of
eligible children complained they saw little change in the quality of their
children's education. Most telling, perhaps, the achievement test scores of
the children served were not significantly better than their non-Title I
counterparts. The small improvements they did make proved temporary.

She cites some of the research supporting her claims, and continues (I don't
know quote how archly or facetiously the word ``oddly'' is meant)

Oddly, these data had no noticeable effect on Congress's views of the program.
High levels of funding continued. In fact, by the early 1980s, public policy
was forcing researchers to distort data. A prime example is a 1982 report by
the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)9 on the reading, science, and mathematics performance of
American youth during the 1970s. No grade levels were given; no standardized
tests were used. Performance on subjective ``exercises'' created by
``specialists'' determined ``achievement classes.'' ``Lowest'' and ``highest''
were insufficiently defined. No objective criteria for reclassification from
one group to another were given. Vague data for Title I eligible schools were
given, but Title I students were not identified.

Contradictions were unclarified. On the one hand, students within Title I
eligible schools were reported to have increased their representation in
mathematics and science in the highest achievement class at age nine and to
have decreased their representation in the lowest achieving math class at
age seventeen. However, a separate chart dividing groups into lowest and
highest achievers showed that the lowest achievers at ages nine and thirteen
significantly improved in reading but made no significant progress in math
(nine and thirteen) and science (nine). At seventeen, the lowest achievers had
declined in math, as well as reading, and had made no progress in science.

Spanish equivalent of English naphtha
in all of its meanings. The common word for gasoline in some Spanish-speaking
areas (e.g., Argentina). Overall, bencina (`benzene') is more common.

NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement. Among Canada, US, and Mexico,
took effect January 1, 1994. Diane Gates compiled a useful
list of links.

Among Union opponents: ``No American Factories Turning out Anything.''
(``American'' here used in the sense of US.) In Spanish, TLCAN.

A jealous protectionism of jobs unites all nations. Under (US) federal law, a
work visa cannot be issued until it is certified, in this case by a state's
Labor Department, that no American is willing to take the job. Thus, when a
nightclub in Stuart, Florida wanted to hire a
foreigner for an $11/hour job as an exotic dancer, it had to place an ad asking
prospective US applicants to send a résumé to the Bureau of
Workforce Program Support at the state's Department of Labor. (The ad appeared
the week of April 11, 1999; it ran in the Palm Beach Post.)

Paid a wage up front to dance?

Is the state of Florida qualified to make this certification? My friend Mike,
a solid-state physicist, had a job bartending nights at a club in Maryland.
The proprietor explained to him how to decide whether a girl was a good dancer:
If people bought beer, she was a good dancer. [Girl is a technical term
here, okay? A term of art. I've been in a bar where the dancing girls
happened to be male, although they didn't seem to be. You gotta be careful,
you never know what you'll pick up.]

A concern for the AFL-CIO: there are more
cheap-labor countries on the mainland of North America (N. Amer., q.v.). Good news for the AFL-CIO: NAFTA will not be expanded! Bad news: FTAA.

National Assessment Governing
Board. ``[A] 26-member board established by Congress in 1988 to set policy
for the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP). The ``Board is composed of state, local, and
federal officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the
general public.'' Not surprisingly, it's findings are completely at variance
with the evident precipitous decline in student achievement that is before the
noses of all educators.

The District of Columbia and about three-quarters of the states have an
affiliated organization. Some of the state organizations (Iowa, Louisiana,
Washington, and Wisconsin) have names of the form <State Name>
Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Unfortunately, there
is only one NAICU member school in Hawaii (Chaminade).

National Association for Information
Destruction. ``[T]he international trade association for companies
providing information destruction services. Suppliers of products, equipment
and services to destruction companies are also eligible for membership.
NAID's mission is to promote the information destruction industry and the
standards and ethics of its member companies.''

The word national in the name is now used
in the common sense of international. There are member companies in
Australia, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Germany,
Guam, Ireland, Singapore, the UK, and in the US, where the organization was founded.

NAILDD

North American Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Project. That
name sounds just the teensiest bit retributive. If I were you, I'd mind that
due date strictly.

NAION

Non-arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy.
According to a statement released by Pfizer, Inc., in May 2005, this is the
most common acute optic nerve disease in adults over age 50. I'm not sure how
significant this is, after all the qualifiers. An ischemia is a local blood
shortage. ``Local'' in the sense of being limited to a particular body region,
organ, or tissue. It typically arises from a problem in a particular blood
vessel -- vasoconstriction, thrombosis, or embolism.

I can't decide whether this entry should end on the line
``if you keep on doing that you're going to go blind!'' or some other.

NAIP

The National Association of
Installing Partners. It ``was formed by a team of sales, installation and
service professionals with decades of experience in the low voltage industry.''
Their site has resources both for consumers and ``low voltage professionals.''
I think that's wonderful.

In digital communication, a NAK is a way to indicate that an expected data
packet was not received within an expected time, or that it was found to be
corrupt (typically because a checksum didn't check out). A NAK is effectively
a retransmission request, like ``Wie bitte?'' NAK has been verbed; to NAK is
to send a NAK. The use of NAK and ``negative acknowledge'' has led to the
retronym ``positive acknowledge.''

(US) National Air Museum. There couldn't be much to see there unless
they've got some smog on display. Hmmm, it seems someone had the bright idea
of evacuating some of the displays... the NAM only existed from 1946 to
1966; since then it's been the National Air and Space Museum
(NASM).

National Archaeological Museum. There's one in Athens, appropriately
enough. The entire stewardship of archaeological treasures in Greece is a
disaster, because it's under the jurisdiction of a Ministry of Culture that is
simultaneously very jealous of its power and totally underfunded. If you find
something that looks ancient on your land, the only sensible thing you can do
is dig it up and hide it under your bed. If you tell MiniCult about it,
they'll just immediately rope off your land so you can't disturb it, and spend
the next decade or so with the cataloguing of your site sitting in their
in-box. Eventually, they'll collect the artifacts and put them in storage
awaiting analysis in the indefinite future. The NAM has about the sort of
confused web-absence that you would expect from such a system.
Here's the
ministry's pitiful English page for it.

Oh, alright, technically, it was created to find a third way, not aligning with
either of the two post-WWII power blocs (US and USSR). Sure. The locus classicus of the
``moral equivalence'' fallacy. [To be excruciatingly fair, Yugoslavia, China,
and Albania did follow alternate paths toward the end of socialism, independent
and opposed to the USSR.]

With the end of the Cold War and with emergence of some NAM members from
poverty (typically through exploitation of their resources by the West), the
pretense that this organization has unity or meaningful purpose is often
threadbare, but it must continue to exist (this is a universal law of
C. Northcote Parkinson). In service of its continued existence, it continues
to achieve prodigies of hypocrisy. Perhaps that is its purpose.

You can read online an address
by the Prime Minister of India at the XII NAM Summit at Durban on 3 September
1998. About half of the speech is devoted to the issue of rolling back
nuclear proliferation. The position is very easy to understand if you simply
understand that there are good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are all the
countries that have nuclear weapons, and nothing that the bad guys do is ever
even remotely progressive. The good guys are the countries that are working so
hard to ban the bomb. Most of the good guys have no nukes, but some, like, uh, India, have tested
peaceful nuclear devices.
India is still with the good guys, though, because India's heart is in the
right place. India was forced to develop its peaceful devices by military
threats from unnamed neighbors. This is in contrast with the bad guys, who
only developed nuclear weapons because they want to destroy the world and harm
the environment. Ditto Pakistan. Others coming soon.

National (US) Association of
Medical Communicators. Medical Communication is a booming subfield within
the Human Communications discipline. Doctors and medical students are being
trained in effective communication with patients, honing their rhetorical art
on simulated patients (SP's). However, that's all largely irrelevant to this
entry, because NAMC is an organization for journalists and others who report
medical news to the public.

NAMC

National (US) Association of
Minority Contractors. It ``is
a nonprofit trade association that was established in 1969 to address the
needs and concerns of minority contractors. While membership is open to
people of all races and ethnic backgrounds, the organization's mandate,
`Building Bridges -- Crossing Barriers,' focuses on construction industry
concerns common to African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and
Native Americans.'' They apparently also serve women contractors.

``Covering 49 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, NAMC's
membership base includes general contractors, subcontractors, construction
managers, manufacturers, suppliers, local minority contractor associations,
state and local governmental organizations, attorneys, accountants, and other
professionals.'' Organizational funding comes from membership dues, federal
and state government grants, and private-sector grants and contributions.

I wonder if Vermont is the state where they have no members. In the last
debate among Democratic Presidential aspirants before the Iowa Caucuses in
2004, Rev. Al Sharpton sharply criticized former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean for
not having any blacks in high positions in his administrations in Montpelier.
(I forget the wording.) Former Senator Carol Moseley Brown, who was in the
presidential race just to rehabilitate her reputation, defended Dean against
Sharpton. In the aftermath of this debate, Sharpton's poll numbers plummeted
from 1% to 0.1%. Moseley Brown dropped out of the race, mission accomplished,
throwing her support to Dean. Dean's poll numbers slid, and he fell from
front-runner to a disappointing third-place finish.

Afterwards, Dean gave a rousing, animated we-will-not-give-up speech to his
supporters and campaign workers. The speech was televised, and apparently
people over the age of about 25 thought it was a little too animated.
He didn't look presidential enough. Throughout 2003, the man looked like he
was ready to burst with anger at George W. Bush, and now they notice
that he's emotional? What a bunch of uptight honkies. The next week, there
was a debate ahead of the New Hampshire primary. Dean actually felt it
necessary to spin his performance in that televised pep talk, implying none too
subtly that he'd been condescending to his young supporters. Sharpton was
consoling, pointing out that if he (Sharpton) had spent the money Dean
had spent, and gotten 18% of the vote, he would still be in Iowa celebrating.
Apparently some candidates are in the race only to place or show. After the
debate, Dean's poll numbers began to rally from his post-Iowa low, but
Sharpton's soared immediately, from the neighborhood of 0.1% to the threshold
of those heady single-digit heights. With just another factor-of-ten bump,
Sharpton could be a contender for third place. See the MOE entry for an explanation of why these numbers are
meaningful.

Seriously, Dean needs to find out about fitted shirts. For any given sleeve or
chest size, these are available in a number of different neck sizes. Here's a
picture of an angry Howard Dean pointing his finger:

National Alliance for Membership Development. Since 2003 a division of the
ACCE, q.v.

NAMD

National Association of Membership Directors. In 2003 it merged into ACCE, q.v.

NAME

National Association Majorettes England. Sic. I am convinced that
this organization is not a put-on, based on this
page (which very reasonably includes an exoteric preposition in the name)
and this
other one (now defunct), and the fact that they even appear to have
their very own official
webpage. As you can imagine, however, tracking down information about
this organization on the web is no joke.

The association was formed on the 6th of January 2002. This new association
was born out of the desire for an association for majorettes that would give a
broad range of events at regional competitions with qualified judges and also
the opportunity of representing England at European and World Majorette
Championships, and at the same time keeping their identity as majorettes. At
the end of each competition year we hold our National Championships from which
we select the England Team for that year.

Two people with the same name. That's a precisely vague definition,
because the meaning is not sharply delimited.

Biological twinning is something that normally has to be arranged before birth
-- usually in the first couple of days after conception, in fact. Name twins
can be made at any time, by marriage and other mechanisms. Jeff Gillooly,
husband (1990-1993) and partner in crime of Tonya Harding, changed his name to
Jeff Stone in 1995, over the in-court protests of many of the people whose name
twin he became.

National Association of Maritime
Organizations. ``The National Association of Maritime Organizations (NAMO)
is comprised of maritime-related organizations throughout the United States.
NAMO represents its members in all matters on a national level that affect
foreign or domestic waterborne commerce using U.S. ports.''

namorido

A Portuguese word that is a blend of namorado and marido.
Namorado is `boyfriend' (a parallel construction in English would be
`enamoured [one]'). Marido is `husband.' As the frequency or
normativeness of marriage has declined, there was apparently a felt need for a
way to refer to a long-term male companion or father-of-her-children or
significant other or something. Maybe what
used to be called common-law marriage. Hence the blend.

Usually, this kind of blend is made possible by the fact that past participles
of -ar verbs like amar (`to love') take an -ado ending, while other
(-er, -ir) verbs take an -ido ending. In this case, however, the situation is
a little bit different. The noun marido comes from the
Latin adjective maritus. (Yes, it's
``maritus, a, um.'' The neuter form maritum is necessary for the sense
of `paired, closely joined.') Anyway, there was a Latin
verb maritare which was derived from the adjective, rather than the
other way around. Portuguese also has the derived verb maridar, though
it is much less used than various synonyms like casar. (Regarding this
interesting word, see this CASA entry.) Very rare
is the verb's past participle (p.p.) maridado (Latin maritatus).

The verb morrer (`to die') has both a regular and an irregular p.p.
form, roughly like English `die.' In a decent approximation, one may say that
the regular and irregular forms correspond: regular morrido with `died,'
and irregular morto with `dead.' Portuguese also has words na (a
preposition contraction meaning `in the' and a personal pronoun), but it's
syntactically difficult to arrange a na morrido collocation to pun on
namorido.Namorido still sounds kinda pungent, but then, slang is
supposed to. I propose namorto for whatever semantic opportunities may
befall.

As I've been writing and researching this (sure, in that order), I've found the
the comparison of Portuguese and Spanish enlightening, or somewhat instructive,
or at least, well, never mind, it's going in.

The Spanish congener of Portuguese namorado is enamorado, but it
is rather more marked and dramatic than `boyfriend.' It's more like `enamoured
one' in English. Naturally, then, enamorido (analogue of Port.
namorido) would not be a very compelling neologism. Just last January,
Laura mentioned a term that now fills that semantic slot in Argentina, but I
forgot it. Sorry. The word na is only an archaicism in Spanish,
derived from the even more archaic enna for en la, corresponding
to the modern Portuguese contraction na.

Except for those referring to words beginning in n, all of this entry's
statements about Portuguese also apply to
Spanish, with the following adjustments:

There are various slight pronunciation differences of the words
spelled identically in the two languages. Most have to do with vowel
qualities. The greatest difference is that the d in Portuguese sounds
like an English d, whereas the Spanish d (in all contexts above) is
pronounced like the voiced th in English them.

Maridado in Spanish is merely quite rare, rather than very
rare. Sounds like meat, I know. The vocable tends to be used in food
discussions, in the somewhat
bian sense of `accompanied'
(fancy fast food: ``fish accompanied by chips''). The gastronomical
sense also occurs (but is very rare, of course) in Portuguese.

There are slight and increasing differences between the use of
morrer in Portuguese and its congener morir in Spanish.
The spelling difference represents a phonemic difference, and the r and
rr of standard Portuguese correspond reasonably closely to the r and rr
of Spanish. However, so far as I know, not being able to pronounce the
rr properly (r is easy) is generally regarded as a speech defect
throughout the Spanish-speaking world, whereas there are places in
Brazil where the distinction is muted and in some contexts disappears.

Like Portuguese, Spanish has two past participles for this verb. They
are morido (for Port. morrido) and muerto (for
morto). In Spanish, however, the use of morido has been
steadily losing ground to muerto, so that now muerto is
used in constructing all analytic conjugations. (This is especially
so, that I know of, in Argentina.) A somewhat similar situation within
English is that of some old adjectives like brazen, flaxen,leaden,leathern, and silvern. These special
adjectives have largely given way to the attributive use of the
corresponding nouns brass, flax, (do you even know what that
is?)
lead [the metallic kind],
etc. (Of course, brazen survives in its transferred sense.)
Other such adjectives -- golden and wooden spring to mind
-- have fared better. So morido vs. morrido. So it
goes. In functional terms, verbs make a closer analogy (lit/lighted).
In some cases in English, strong forms are displacing the more modern
weak forms. Don't tell me ``that makes sense.''

The irregularity of Port. morrer (and Span. morir) has a simple
cause, somewhat similar to the cause of the oddity associated with
maridar. In all these, an original Latin adjective was carried forward
into Romance along with a verb from which it was not derived. At all stages of
evolution, the verb also had a regularly derived p.p., which could be used as
part of an analytic verb conjugation or as an adjective. (A little useful
terminology: a verb form (normally a participle) used as an adjective is called
a gerundive, just as a verb form (also normally a participle) used as a noun is
called a gerund.)

In the etymology of marido and maridar, a Latin adjective
maritus gave rise to a verb maritare. In the case of
morto and muerto, the adjective and irregular p.p. is derived
from the Latin adjective mortuus, which is in fact a regularly formed
p.p. of the Latin verb morior. This is, however, a deponent verb. (Cue
disquieting drumroll.) The verbs of modern Romance languages all use verbs
that function more or less like active (i.e., nondeponent) verbs in
Latin. (Cue disquieting sound effects.) Something had to happen, and
something did, but different things in Portuguese and Spanish. The Spanish
verb morir, like most cognate verbs in Romance languages, is derived
from the Vulgar Latin active verb morire. (Cue monkeys.) A small
number of Romance varieties constructed an active
verb from moririor. The latter was an alternative form of the deponent,
archaic but well-attested, that disappeared in the classical Latin of Rome; it
evidently persisted in places. It is presumed that the rr in Portuguese
morrer arose from collapse of the unstressed syllable -rir-.

This entry is what Wikipedia would call a stub, the sort of thing that
painfully ambushes your toe. It's a twisted stub, and one day when I want to
put off grading again I'll extricate the mori- material and create a new
entry. Maybe by then I'll have some idea how moririor, a
third-conjugation verb like morior (I think), gave rise to -er verbs in
Portuguese and some obscure dialects.

I'll be sure to note that morto and muerto, in the respective
languages, function as irregular p.pp. of matar -- yes, matar,
`to kill,' as in matador. In Spanish, for example, instead of saying
that a man was ``matado por la justicia,'' (`killed by [the legal
instrumentalities of] justice') you say he was ``muerto por la
justicia'' (`dead by justice' -- a marked construction, somewhat like our
`put to death'). Imagine: we still don't have a defective-verbs entry!

Exactly how the semantic load is distributed between the regular and highly
irregular participles of matar and cognates, however, varies a great
deal. It is intriguing that Basque has a complete identity between
matar and morir: its verb hil means both `to die' and `to
kill.' ``Hil da'' means `he is dead,' while ``hil du'' means
`he has killed.' Du and da mean `he has' and `he is,' resp.
They are the respective forms of ukan and izan, as an atheist God
is my witless, er, witness. These are the auxiliaries of all transitive and
intransitive verbs, respectively, even if the transitive verb (like
kill) doesn't happen to be taking an explicit target at the time. I'm
dying; take me to the Camptown Races. (For enlightenment, see
this DD entry.)

Incidentally, although it's not obvious from the orthography, the Portuguese
verb morrer is a stem-changing verb like Spanish morir: the
normally close o changes to an open o in the third person and the second-person
singular of the present indicative. Something happens in the imperative too.
The stem change is more extensive in the conjugation of Spanish morir,
but apart from the stem change and the past participle, the verbs are basically
regular. You wanted to know.

When all that's out, there'll be plenty of space to talk about Italian
inamorata and the fact that wife in Portuguese and Spanish is not
marida but esposa (that's right: `female spouse').

North American Numbering Plan. ``Mask'' for telephone numbers in the
U.S., Canada, Bermuda, over 20 Caribbean
countries, developed by Bell Telephone in the 1940's. Originally, all numbers
were of the form NIX-NNX-NNNN where I=0-1, N=2-9, X=0-9. This allowed switch
software to recognize area codes from the second digit. The introduction of
cellular phones, and the stupid policy of assigning a large block of (ten
thousand) numbers to any company, led quickly to the exhaustion of the mere
160 area codes allowed under the original system, so a new scheme has been
replacing the original: NXX-NXX-XXXX. Now there is no numerical difference
between area codes and local exchanges, so you have to enter an initial 1
to alert the switching software that the next three digits are to be
interpreted as an area code.

It's virtually impossible to pronounce NANP so it sounds different from NAMP. NANP is administered by ...

National Association of Orthopaedic
[sic] Nurses. The ``[sic]'' is not part of the name. It's
just a way of pointing out `Look! Commonwealth spelling!'' Sic means
`thus' in Latin. ``National'' means US in NAON.
It's based in Pitman,
New Jersey. Founded in 1980. ``Members are the `backbone' of NAON.''

National Academy Press. Guarantees that
all those well-intentioned but worthless and boring studies sponsored by the
US National Academies (see NAS) will find a publisher.
What's the matter, won't Jossey-Bass take'em?

NAP

Network Access Point. They're basically the places where the parts of the
internet ``backbone'' are joined, but
what?is.com will be happy to tell you
about them in better detail. So will any of the four NAP's themselves:

National Automotive Parts
Association. An auto parts distribution system that was founded as a
retailers' cooperative in 1925, it was down to a cooperative of just three
members before Genuine Parts Company (founded in 1928) bought NAPA Hawaii. As
of this writing (2006), Genuine Parts operates 58 of NAPA's 69 distribution
centers. Quaker City Motor Parts of Pennsylvania operates the rest.

Minor leagues were classified into A, B, C, and D levels from 1902 to 1911. A
top level of Double-A (or AA) was added in 1912, and a level
A1 was inserted
between A and AA in 1936. In 1946, the top two levels were renamed: A1 became
AA and AA became Triple-A (a/k/a AAA).

The lower classifications B, C, and D were eliminated after 1962. Since 1963,
the lowest classification has been Rookie League. There are also Winter
Leagues (a generic term for leagues that play in the off-season; their names
usually include ``Winter League'' or ``Fall League'').

North American Potbellied Pig
Association. ``Located in the United States, NAPPA is the oldest
potbellied pig service organization in the world, offering education and
information about the pet pig.'' I dunno -- Wally, who had the office next to
mine at ASU, had a pet like that, too. He regarded
it as a pet, though it was just an ordinary hog, and when it was full-grown he
had it slaughtered. (I recently met a woman who grew up on a farm in Michigan,
and she explained that on a farm you eat your pets. I don't think every
farmer's daughter would put it that way, and I doubt farm families eat cats or
dogs. She tries to be provocative; I guess claiming to eat one's pets is a
standard provocation.)

Negative-Acting Proofing System. I guess I've cleared up that
question!

NAPS

North American Patristic
Society. The name is often written with plural ``Patristics'' as the third word, but officially it's singular.
Their newsletter is called Patristics. I dunno. It seems to me
that the adjective is patristic, and the noun is patristics.
The organization name ought to use the attributive noun, because the society
itself is not patristic. I think I'll sleep on it.

Hmm. It seems to have been a consistent spelling error by their original
homepage wizard. It's ``Patristics'' after all.

Oh yeah, ``The North American Patristics Society is an organization dedicated
to the study of the history and theology of early Christianity.''
They publish The Journal of Early Christian Studies.

NAPS used to hold a members-only session at the annual APS, but in 1980 they
went off on their own, and today (2004) they hold an annual meeting in Chicago
in May.

NAR

National (US) Association of
Realtors. The NAR periodically computes and publicizes an ``affordability
index'' which is simply the ratio of median income divided by the median
mortgage payment (determined for the same intervals -- monthly income divided
by monthly payment, let's say). At the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, the
index was at 1.08; at the end of 2008, as the bubble is bursting or rapidly
deflating, the index is at 1.42. They don't actually find out what the median
mortgage payment is. They take the median price of houses being sold, stir in
some assumptions such as 20% down payment, and compute an idealized sort of
mortgage payment corresponding to the median house.

National Association of Rehabilitation
Providers and Agencies. ``NARA was founded in 1978 to serve as the trade
association to represent the interests of Medicare-certified rehabilitation
agencies and multidisciplinary rehabilitation businesses that treat Medicare
patients. The majority of the 250 members are Medicare Part B providers that
contract with long term care facilities for one or more of the three primary
rehabilitation services, which are physical therapy (P.T.), occupational
therapy (O.T.) and speech language pathology (S.L.P.).'' (Pathology is a
service now?) I think NARA originally stood for just ``National Association of
Rehabilitation Agencies.''

That name turned out to be a foe paw, I think it's
called. In particular, the word abortion doesn't have very positive
associations, so those who favor it also favor a circumlocution when one is
possible. ``Choice'' is the choice euphemism, and the right to abort is
``rights of pregnant women.'' Eventually (possibly as late as 2004 or 2005),
they sealed the acronym and started going
exclusively by ``NARAL - Pro-Choice America.'' This business works in both
directions (the anti-abortion side favors ``pro-life,'' since everyone is
pro-``pro'' and anti-``anti''), and maybe I'll have more to say about it after
I cook up a shibboleth entry. Cf.NRLC.

The original expansion mentions abortion and ``reproductive rights'';
I'm not sure what all the other rights are. NARAL has made it clear over the
years, however, that it regards as a violation of those rights any law
requiring a pregnant minor to have a parent or guardian's approval to have an
abortion. NARAL's conception (ooh, sorry) of ``reproductive rights'' seems to
include mostly non-reproductive rights.

Back in Argentina in the 1950's, my father worked in management for a
conglomerate that had, among its businesses, a very large drug store. There
was a strike by unionized employees, which put the pharmacists in a difficult
spot. So the pharmacists came to work but stayed out of sight, and management
personnel manned the counters. A fellow came in acting somewhat diffident, and
didn't make it clear what he wanted. The pharmacist guessed and told my father
to ask if the man wanted ``píldoras para bebé''
(`baby pills'). ``¡Para NO bebé!'' came the reply. So my
father was instructed to dispense two large enteric-coated pills of ginger
extract as an abortifacient.

NARCotics agent. Law officer working on drug-law enforcement. Most
applied to DEA agents. Pejorative as well as slang,
so I don't think the finer distinctions among different law enforcement
agencies are punctiliously observed.

If etymology were semantic law, then narcotic would be a synonym
of soporific.

NARF

National AIDS Research Foundation. Founded in
Los Angeles with a quarter million dollar donation from
AIDS-sufferer Rock Hudson and the support of his friend and sometime co-star
Elizabeth Taylor. NARF was incorporated in
August 1985 and merged the next month with a similar organization (AMF) to form amfAR.

Naturally-occurring or Accelerator-produced Radioactive Materials.
Traditionally in the US, both of these have been regulated only by the states,
with no federal regulation (apart from federally-run facilities). Cf.NORM.

Any textile fabric not wider than 45 cm (about 18 in.). The narrow-fabric
industry considers its bailiwick to include ``ribbons,
laces, cords, tapes, labels, webbings, wicks, elastics, ropes, straps,
trims, fringes and lanyards ... crafted out of different kinds of materials
such as leather, cotton, satin, velvet, polyester, teflon, rubber, jute, nylon,
fiber glass and also beads.'' They serve a helpful short
textile-terms glossary. ``Smallwares'' is sometimes used as a synonym of
``narrow fabrics.''

National Adult Reading Test. Used as a measure of pre-morbid intelligence
of psychiatric patients. This is on the (in some cases now statistically
confirmed) assumption that the pronunciation of irregular words is unaffected
in various clinical disorders and that performance is highly correlated with
general intellectual ability. It is also necessary to ascertain whether NART
scores are correlated with other measures used in clinical diagnosis of
psychiatric patients, such
as BPRS and SANS.

NARTE

National Association of Radio and Telecommunications Engineers.

NARTH

National Association for Research and Therapy
of Homosexuality. ``[A] non-profit, educational organization dedicated
to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality.''
Needless to note, they disagree with the majority or official view of the
psychological community that homosexuality is not a disease or disorder
requiring treatment as such. ``NARTH is a member of Positive
Alternatives To Homosexuality (PATH).''

'nary

Hardly any.

n-ary, N-ary

Having n (or N) arguments or parameters. Term used to characterize
functions used in a computer program. Usually only the explicit arguments
are counted, and counting is by name (i.e., an array passed as such,
whether by name or by value, counts as a single parameter). If you spend a
lot of time worrying about this, you probably need to get back to coding.

During the Democratic party's presidential nominating convention in 2000,
nominee Albert Gore was suddenly overcome by sexual passion and completely
spontaneously decided to give his wife Tipper a long wet movie kiss on prime
time television, thus completely inadvertently proving that while his economic
program was pure Clinton, he was obviously faithful to his wife (unlike some
other people). Al must think that Tipper is quite a number. And Al invented
computer functions. He probably also wrote that song about Tipperary. (Sorry.
The song just kept going through my mind as I optimized the entry; I had to
find some excuse to squeeze it in.)

I'm Hen-ary the eighth I am
Hen-ary the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She's been married seven times before

The aitch is silent. The lead singer Peter Noone -- ``Herman'' -- is a
Mancunian half-heartedly faking a Cockney accent. (Incidentally, his surname
is pronounced ``noon'' -- a single syllable.)

In Greek (ancient and modern), the aitch sound is
not indicated by a separate alphabetic character but by a breathing mark or
spiritus placed over an initial vowel. Originally, there was only a
rough-breathing mark; the absence of that mark indicated smooth breathing.
Later a smooth-breathing mark (an inverted rough-breathing mark) was developed
to indicate the same thing. This was not an improvement; the tops of the
letters are cluttered enough with tiny illegible accents.

The rough breathing mark can also appear over the rho, where it roughly (sorry
again) indicates aspiration. Aspiration on unvoiced plosives is indicated by a
change of letter (kappa to chi, pi to phi, tau to theta). In Latin transliteration, all four aspirated consonants
have the aspiration indicated by an aitch (rh, ch, ph, th), but initial rough
breathing on a vowel is indicated by an initial aitch (as in hero,
herpes, etc.). Farsi (the Persian
language) also has that distinction in the arr sound, which is often indicated
in English transliteration by r versus hr. (With a fricative, the aspiration
is more or less simultaneous with other elements of articulation, so it's not
surprising that when explicitly indicated, the feature has appeared both before
and after the base letter.)

NAS

National Academy of Sciences.
A ``private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars
engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance
of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the
authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy
has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific
and technical matters.''

They've been proliferating, diluting their prestige among National Academies of
Sciences and Engineering, and an Institute of Medicine. The thin end of the
wedge was economists, then other social ``sciences.'' It was downhill from
there. The same thing happened with the Institute for Advanced Studies in
Princeton (IAS). When it was started by the
Bambergers, partly as a haven for ``European scientists'' fleeing fascism, it
was mostly physicists and mathematicians. Today it's mostly historians and
social scientists.

National Association of Scholars. The
``only academic organization dedicated to the restoration of intellectual
substance, individual merit, and academic freedom in the university.'' Sister
organization of the CanadianSAFS.

NAS

Nerve Attenuation Syndrome. Something half the world's population is
suffering from in 2021, in the movie Johnny Mnemonic (JM).

Need Another Seven Astronauts. Gallows humor after the Shuttle Challenger
disaster in 1986. I suppose there must have been someone with the poor taste
to revive the joke after the loss of the Columbia in 2003.

American Studies was established at the Universiteit van Amsterdam
(UvA) in 1947, the same year that Secretary of
State George C. Marshall gave his
famous speech (June 5, at Harvard) proposing elements of what came to be
known as the Marshall Plan. NASA (the Dutch NASA) was founded in 1977, at a
conference at the Agnietenkapel of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

NASAA

North American Securities Administrators Association.

Here are some of their tips for not getting taken (from back in 1989, when
fraud was not universal).

The harder a telephone salesperson presses, the wiser it is to resist. If
a caller turns abusive, hang up.

Don't fall for any claims of spectacular rewards or promised ``guarantees''
until you can verify the legitimacy of the deal and have a clear picture of all
the risks involved.

If you can't understand an investment, don't buy it without the counsel of
a trusted and knowledgable adviser. [Ah -- there's the rub! Finding an
adviser you can trust.]

Never give your credit-card number to a stranger on the phone. [Uh-oh...]

Be especially suspicious of propositions involving delayed delivery of the
investment in question.

Likewise, look warily at any deal in which the seller proposes some unusual
arrangement to collect your money, such as sending a messenger.

National Association for Scientific and
Cultural Appreciation. I'm pleased that the nation of which they are -al
is the UK. We're more than well-supplied with this
stuff (Atlantis, astrology that works, 666 taken seriously, etc.); it's good to
spread the manure, and equanimity in the face of flaming eccentricity is
something the British do rather well. (I can only wish it were unusual, but
it's far enough out of round to be incontestably eccentric.)

NASCA says it ``is an organisation devoted to areas of science that are
otherwise poorly covered.'' It puts one in mind of things better covered, to
say nothing of honored, in the
breach.

I beg the reader's indulgence, but since I have a NASCAR entry and a Spam
entry, I can't resist drawing a connection. In a townhall.com
column September 10, 2004, Jonah Goldberg ridiculed US Democratic party
presidential candidate John Kerry for slumming, in so many words, like a
candidate campaigning for votes:

``Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?'' Kerry asked not too long ago, about as
convincingly as a French chef lauding Spam.

In the late 1990's, the NASD had the idea that it would become a ``market
of markets.'' In 1998 NASD reached agreement in principle to purchase of the
Amex, completing the deal that year or the next. They also tried to buy the PhilEx but couldn't reach an agreement.

The anticipated synergies did not materialize and the business model was
abandoned. On January 24, 2002, NASD put the Amex up for sale. I still have
to check on the current status of that.

NASDA

NAtional (Japanese) Space
Development Agency. NASDA was created on October 1, 1969, by passage of
the National Space Development Agency Law. It doesn't seem ever to have been
called anything like ``National Air and Space whatnot'' -- they evidently just
wanted an old-fashioned pronounceable acronym.

National Association of Securities Dealers
Automated Quotation System. A virtual stock market founded in 1971.
Virtual in the sense that there is no geographically central trading
floor--transactions are conducted and recorded by phone and other electronics.
Has surpassed the NYSE in average daily volume.
Tends to list more technology stocks. In March 1998, there was news of
negotiations to acquire the AMEX. Mmm, let me get
back to this entry, I haven't read the newspaper in years.

Stocks listed on the NASDAQ are analyzed by the NSG (NASDAQ Stock Guide?)
which is not affiliated with NASDAQ.

``Well-prepared, safe, wholesome'' ... this sounds like lunch. How about
learned, demanding, effective?

NASE

National Association for
Self-Esteem. A darn useful and important organization, if they do say so
themselves. For an alternative, research-backed opinion, see the floccinaucinihilipilification
entry. Looks like a real donnybrook! But it's an easy call. I mean, who you
gonna believe -- a bunch of behavioral ``scientists'' or a self-appointed
committee of educrats?

Nash was one of the companies that merged (as part of Nash-Kelvinator) into
American Motors (q.v.) in 1954. The
Rambler was Nash's most successful line at the time, and much of the early
marketing effort of AMC was bent on leveraging the Rambler product and name.
They rebadged Ramblers for sale by Hudson dealers in 1954; later the separate
marques were dropped and all cars sold by AMC were called Ramblers. That
happened in 1958. The same year there was a joke pop song in 1958 about a guy
driving a Cadillac (in the 1950's this was a luxury car rather than your
grandfather's pimpmobile) and a guy driving a ``little Nash Rambler.'' The
story is told from the point of view of the guy in the Cadillac, who describes
a race in which the Rambler driver is trying to show him up. The song was
``Beep Beep,'' by The Playmates, and it was on Doctor Demento from time to
time. Choose a lyrics page for it from among these.

``America's only private, non-profit, non-partisan resource center made up
of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. Both in the United
States and abroad, social insurance encompasses broad-based public systems
for insuring workers and their families against economic insecurity caused
by loss of income from work and the cost of health care.

The Academy's scope includes such social insurance systems as Social Security,
Medicare, workers' compensation and unemployment insurance, and related social
assistance and private employee benefits.''

It must be frustrating to be an expert in a field where everyone has a
politically motivated opinion.

National Association of Sexual Workers. This organization doesn't seem to
have a web site, possibly because it doesn't exist yet. Perhaps you were
thinking of the National Association of Social Workers
(NASW below). In 1994, some researchers in
California published ``National
Survey of Social Workers' Sexual Attraction to Their Clients'' (in vol.
4 of the journal Ethics and Behavior; authors were Ann Bernsen,
Barbara G. Tabachnick, and Kenneth S. Pope). It was actually a pretty boring
article; if they ever want to sell a script they're going to need stories, not
just numbers. Maybe a crib from US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter's 1976
Playboy interview (``I have committed unethical countertransference in
my heart'' or whatever it was he said). And the numbers themselves need to be
jacked up.

The article was subtitled ``Results, Implications, and Comparison to
Psychologists.'' The first word there reminds me of a comment in an article by
one R. Shankar, ``Statistical Mechanics of Random Systems--Exact Results'':

I will mainly be giving results and not many proofs. For those of you who are
disappointed by this, I promise a later talk where I will give lots of proofs
with no results.

[I have an incomplete citation source for this. I guess it was Ramamurti
Shankar of the Yale Physics Dept., on or near page 446 of, I think,
``Disordered Systems'' (that's probably a section title if it's correct) in a
1989 book from IOP Publishing.]

The California Chapter doesn't use a
distinctive initialism; they just refer to themselves as ``NASW-California
Chater.'' If they used NASWC or something like that, they could have had their
own entry in this glossary. See SW entry for
related entries. I know two professional social workers. Judging from this
experience, the range of intelligence of people in the field is vast.

NASUWT

National Association Of
Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers. According to this
page, the ``NASUWT is the largest teachers' union in the
UK.'' The organization's acronym evidently dates
back to the union of two earlier unions. I suppose they failed to come up with
a more wieldy name because they got hung up on the contemporary awkwardness of
``schoolmistress.'' The acronym is now pretty well
sealed; on the homepage, ``The Teachers'
Union'' appears in lieu of an acronym expansion.

As of 2004, NATAS is having a hard time figuring out how to make internal
hyperlinks that work at the natas.tv site linked at the begining of this
entry. They seem to have a number of independent, equally official sites. Try
the slow-loading emmyonline.org or
natasonline.com instead.

National Association of Teachers of
Further and Higher Education. ``Higher and Higher Education'' would have
conveyed the same idea more and more perfectly. The organization was founded
in 1904 as the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutes. The silly
NATFHE moniker was adopted in 1976. In December 2005, members of NATFHE and
AUT voted overwhelmingly to merge, the amalgamation
taking place officially on June 1, 2006. NATFHE members were especially keen
on this (95.7% of voting members, as opposed to only 79.2% of voting AUT
members), evidently because the merger would entail getting rid of the silly
name. The new union is called the University and College Union
(UCU).

Of the US and Canada -- as in
`National Junior Classical League'
(JCL). You actually find some people
who think that ``American'' can be used without qualification
in Canada to mean ``North American'' or ``Canadian and/or
of the US'' or some such. That might be logical, but it might
also be inconvenient. Anyway, it doesn't work that way, other
than in proper nouns for continental (or so) organizations.

Any-old-countrian -- as in the 100+ `National Contract Bridge
Organizations' members of the WBF
(details
here), which is to say

Of England and Wales (but not all of Great Britain, let alone the
UK) -- as in
NUT. London-born Kingsley Amis went
to live in South Wales in 1948 (he got a teaching position at
the University of Wales, Swansea), and he commented in his
Memoirs that people there then made no distinction
between England and Wales. They thought of themselves as
living in England. (And presumably they used ``Englishman'' as
a synonym of Briton,q.v.)
These people spoke no or little Welsh, and many of them had
short histories in the place. Amis noted that the culture was
different further north and (of course) in rural areas, though
I don't recall any comment specifically regarding the senses of
``England'' and ``English'' there.

A ``national of'' some country is a citizen of that country (not necessarily
very carefully construed).

nationalist

In the context of Northern Ireland: of the opinion that it should become
part of the Republic of Ireland. I.e.,
pro-Union-with-the-Republic-of-Ireland. Cf. unionist.

Ireland is predominantly Roman Catholic, and the
UK
(the union that unionists favor union with) is predominantly, or nominally, or
by default or something, Protestant. (Too, the UK monarch has something to do
with the state church, which is Protestant.) It happens that many of the Irish
leaders in Ireland's struggle for independence from the UK were Protestant. Be
that as it may, the partition of Ireland was approximately along religious
lines. The parts of Northern Ireland where nationalist parties poll well are
predominantly Catholic, and those where unionists poll well are not. In loose
but accurate terms, the conflict in Northern Ireland is between religious
communities. This is not to say that the conflict in Northern Ireland is
about religion per se, any more than the 1960's civil rights
struggle in the US was about skin pigmentation per se.
Nevertheless, in both cases the grievances, perceptions, goals, etc., are
strongly correlated with social identity, broadly defined. However, in the
last few days I've added a couple of potentially inflammatory entries. (Ha!
Try to find them!) Thus, like the news media, I will prefer to ignore the
religious subtext and write as if the N.I. conflict were some sort of
unmotivated abstract dispute about value-neutral national alliances.

nationalist

This word has a range of meanings, but in my experience, European
bien-pensants regard it as a very bad thing, almost synonymous with
fascist, whereas many American academics seem to use it in a looser and
less sinister sense similar to patriotic person.

An Israeli bimonthly published in Hebrew since 1988, now under the aegis of
ACPR and available online in
English. The periodical's name is typically block-capitalized in English
transliteration. The Hebrew name of the journal means `path.'

native

An adjective and noun ultimately derived from
the Latinnat-, past participial stem of
nasci, `to be born.' It's been drifting semantically all these
centuries, and now generally implies that the thing so described (as
native) is original to some context stated or implied. Hence the term
``native-born,'' whose etymological sense might be something like `born born,'
specifies that the sense in which someone is native to a place is that he is,
as we used to say not too long ago, ``native to'' the place.

Native

I thought we should have a Return of the native entry, so here it is.

NATLFED

NATional Labor FEDeration. A cult. See longer entry for the shorter
acronym NLF.

NATO

National (US) Association of Theatre
Owners. It's known as ``the other NATO.'' Europe isn't even close to
being one of their theaters of operation. The ``theatre'' in the name is not a
misspelling or an indication that they have mostly Canadian or any live
theater. It's just pretentious.

NATO

National (US) Association of Travel Organizations. During the 1950's, this
association conducted a campaign ``to change the observance of certain major
holidays to Mondays'' (in the words of James L. Bossemeyer, NATO's executive
VP, in his article ``Travel: American Mobility'' for the Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 313, (1957),
pp. 113-6, the source also for the next paragraph).

Specifically, the plan called for the ``observance of Presidents' Day on the
3rd Monday in February, Memorial Day on the 4th Monday in May, Independence Day
on the 1st Monday in July, and Thanksgiving Day on the 4th Monday in
November.'' Bossemeyer claimed that ``[t]he plan has drawn enthusiastic
support from the majority of individuals to whom it has been adequately
explained.'' The individuals who did not support it were evidently deemed not
to have suffered an adequate explanation (see
educate people).

I just picked up a copy of NATO: A Bleak Picture (Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1977), by S. Vladimirov and L. Teplov. (The translator is not
named. I detect a pattern here; read about Trotsky's book.) Concluding the introduction, at
p. 25 they explain:

The aim of this book is to reveal the true nature of the North Atlantic
bloc--from the time it was set up to the present day--to demonstrate both the
futility and the dangerous nature of its activities. The book also outlines a
broad programme of measures which are the only alternative to NATO policy.

NATO(-subsidized) Advanced Study Institute.
Usually held in Italy in the summer, in my
experience. Eligibility to attend, back when that was an issue, was based on
work affiliation, so during the Cold War, Vietnamese nationals conducting
research in France attended. So I heard.

naturalist

This is one of those words that has had so many meanings over time that if
all of them were regarded as possible senses in current use, the word would be
almost useless.

The earliest sense (judging from a quoted instance dating to 1581) given by the
OED is that of ``[a]n expert in or student of natural
science; a natural philosopher, a scientist,'' marked as obsolete. I first
encountered this in the ``Historical Introduction'' at the beginning of A.E.H.
Love's A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity. On page 4
of the fourth edition (1934) there is this paragraph (of which only the part up
to the word ``besides'' is relevant to this entry):

Except Coulomb's, the most important work of the period for the general
mathematical theory is the physical discussion of elasticity by Thomas Young.
This naturalist (to adopt Lord Kelvin's name for students of natural science)
besides defining his modulus of elasticity, was the first to consider shear as
an elastic strain13. He called it ``detrusion,'' and noticed that
the elastic resistance of a body to shear, and its resistance to extension or
contraction, are in general different; but he did not introduce a distinct
modulus of rigidity to express resistance to shear. He defined ``the modulus
of elasticity of a substance14'' as ``a column of the same substance
capable of producing a pressure on its base which is to the weight causing a
certain degree of compression, as the length of the substance is to the
diminution of its length.'' What we now call ``Young's modulus'' is the weight
of this column per unit area of its base. This introduction of a definite
physical concept, associated with the coefficient of elasticity which descends,
as it were from a clear sky, on the reader of mathematical memoirs, marks an
epoch in the history of science.

The OED quotes the second sentence above up to ``besides'' from the first
edition (1892), in which Lord Kelvin was identified as Sir William Thomson.
[Thomson was made Baron Kelvin, of Largs in the County of Ayr, only in the same
year 1892.] The OED does not quote Thomson s.v. Its quotations for this sense
of the word are from the years 1581, 1605, 1654, 1686, 1726, 1752 (publ. 1777),
1795, 1813 (publ. 1846), and 1892. It might be that in some conversation with
Love, Thomson used the word naturalist in a way that had become rare,
and that Love mistook his usage for a neologism. Some word was needed, but
during the nineteenth century the word scientist was coined -- probably
by Whewell by 1840, though possibly by someone else as early as 1834 -- and
quickly became popular. William Whewell was a highly successful neologist.

The hit song ``Nature's Way'' appeared in a studio version in Spirit's
second album, ``The Family the Plays Together'' (1968). One particular
repetition of ``it's nature's way'' is intoned like the start of a sneeze. At
the end of the song, muffled coughs are heard in the background.

In 1975, R. F. Autry was awarded Canadian patent 997,608, entitled
``production of meat snack product.'' The patent was for ``a flat edible dried
bar snack having good shelf life and comprising upper and lower layers
[kinda makes me nostalgic for ISO
9000 Certification] of an edible collagen film and a thicker center layer
of meat emulsion.'' The coatings (upper and lower, above and below; also left
and right or front and back -- see below... I mean later on here)
are intended inter alia to

contain soft meat emulsions during extrusion,

act as a barrier to oxidation, and

restrain fat leakage.

Yummy!

``A typical formulation for the emulsion [is] 120 lb. chuck tenders,
60 lb navels, 1.7 kg salt, 1 kg
dextrose, 250 g
black pepper, 100 g red pepper, 90 g mustard, 90 g coriander,
70 g nutmeg, 50 g garlic, 100 g
curing mixture, and 100 g starter culture.'' Double-plus yummy.
(But it needs way more spices.)
``The emulsion is placed on an edible collagen film about 1 mil thick,
covered with another collagen film, and rolled [I think this means flattened
with a roller] to a thickness of about 0.25
inch. The sheet is placed in a smokehouse or drier, and heated initially at
a low temperature and high humidity to allow the starter organisms to
function.'' What is their function, exactly? ``Eventually, a
temperature of 150 °F is put in effect for 30 min. When the
moisture content falls below 20%, the sheets are rolled and cut into the shape
of candy bars and packed. A smoking step can be applied
during drying. It is not clear whether the texture of the finished product is
similar to that of a typical jerky.'' It isn't entirely clear why they need
much of an ``upper'' layer.

The quotes above (including the metric-transition-era units, and the absence of
the word ``cook'') are taken from the chapter 18, ``Meat-Based Snacks,'' of
Snack Food Technology by Samuel A. Matz (p. 232; see the snack food entry for bibliographic details).
It occurs to me that Metzger is German for `butcher,' and that
Metzger and Matz bear as close a relationship to each other as
navels and most people's unconsidered notions of meat or even of mats of meat
emulsion. Yummy. Evidently, ``navel'' is a sort of meat-industry synecdoche for um,
less commercial cuts of carcass.

Currently there's some more navel content in
the entry that follows this one, and there
likely always will be. There's also a bit at the
orbit entry.

navel exercises

In Japanese, heso-ga cha-o wakasu [literally:
`navel boils tea'] is an idiom meaning one is extremely funny. Perhaps the
definition is recursive in a Zen sort of way. This
puts innies and outies in a whole new light, and may go some way to explaining
why the obese should be particularly jolly, despite all we imagine we know
about ``cholesterol.''

This entry is part of the Japanese belly information ring. Next stop:
seppuku.

People often become vegetarians for moral reasons (cf. other NAVS). Perhaps you are attracted to moral persons.
Alicia Silverstone is a North American and a vegetarian (or maybe a vegan; I'll have to remember to ask her next
time I have a chance).

According to Desirable Men, Chapter 27
(``Dating the Second Time Around''), p. 195,

Two basic kinds of salads are available in almost every restaurant:
Caesar salads and garden salads.

Further on: ``Hostesses of most restaurants are extremely helpful during
off-peak hours. ... You may ask, `What is an easy
food item to eat?' ... Be honest and let her
know that you will be there on a date and
don't want to make a fool out of
yourself.'' (This is a juicy morsel of advice-book wisdom, inviting
comment, but I'm not going to bite.)

Chapter 24 is ``Graceful Exit Lines.'' Here are a couple from p. 175:

I'm celibate.

I need to use the restroom.

(I know the second one worked for Michael Corleone.)

I happen to think that real grace is making ``Mr. Wrong'' think not
meeting again was his idea. Here's a graceful exit-stimulation line
for that purpose:

It does no good to put Caesar dressing on the garden salad. Caesar salad
dressing has finely divided anchovies.

It's becoming increasingly hard to believe, but the original impulse to create
this glossary came from a desire for my microelectronics students to understand
those elements of my lectures that might require a level of English fluency not
commonly acquired by ESL engineering students. But
it's all good: some fraction of engineering graduate students finish up their
degrees and, perhaps after a stint as slaves on the fab
line to convert their visa status, go on to open a restaurant with the word
Tandoori in the name.

It was created by Donald P. Bellisario, creator of JAG, it fills JAG's old time slot, and its main
characters were introduced in a special episode of JAG late in the previous
season. For people who liked that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing
that they will like. Some
fastidious types assert that technically it is not a spin-off because none of the previous season's
regular JAG cast got a regular part in Navy NCIS.

I don't know how Donald got the extra el in his name -- the Spanish name is Belisario. I see two
possibilities. One is that the name is Italian. More likely, however, is that
he was so happy with the first el, he figured he'd go with that and do the same
thing again. Go with your strength. Do it again. Like JAG and NCIS, or
Navy NCIS.

I think that Bellisario needs to be liberated from the endless cycle of
violence investigation. That's my pretext, as they say, for mentioning
Polisario, which is also known as the Western Sahara Liberation Front. They've
been trying to break into prime-time news since 1975, with little success in
the US.

The lead character of JAG is officer Harmon Rabb, former Navy fighter
pilot. The lead role in Navy NCIS is a naval
officer played by Mark Harmon. It's a good thing we're all so smart, or we'd
have trouble keeping the different shows straight.

Neues Ausbildungszentrum bei
HARTING. `New Training Center at HARTING.' More specifically,
at HARTING Technologiegruppe. Harting is a surname, apparently of the founder
of the business, but they like to capitalize it.

Nb

Chemical symbol for niobium. A period-4 transition
metal, atomic number 41, named after Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus. The
element was earlier known as columbium and had the symbol
Cb. Learn more at its entry
in WebElements and its entry
at Chemicool.

NB, N/B

Narrow Band.

NB

Neutral Buoyancy.

NB

Postal abbreviation for the province of New Brunswick in Canada (.ca). Capital:
Fredericton. That's right, no k. They spell everything a little bit
funny up there. Must be the latitude.

Where is Old Brunswick?

New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island are known as the
Maritime Provinces, or the Maritimes. At the time this nomenclature arose,
the province of Newfoundland and Labrador could not be included among maritime
provinces of Canada because it was not a province but a separate entity (as
explained at the NF entry). If you wanted a
definition that works today, you could say that the Maritimes are those
provinces all of whose territory is within 300 km or 200 mi. of an ocean coast.
The Atlantic Provinces (Maritimes plus NL) would
have a corresponding definition with 300 mi.

In September 2007, outgoing FAA administrator Marion
C. Blakey spoke to a group of aviation executives at the Aero Club. He warned
them that ``[a]irline schedules have got to stop being the fodder for
late-night monologues. And if the airlines don't address this voluntarily,
don't be surprised when the government steps in.'' According to an AP report,
the US DoT estimated that only 70% of US flights had
arrived on time the previous July. And my mom's flight from Vancouver was
delayed by over two hours yesterday, so this is a serious problem that's
hitting home! Blakey advocated pissy little steps like transitioning from
1960's-era radar-based air traffic control systems to satellite-based
technology. However, this would cost the commercial airlines $15 billion in
new equipment (instrumentation, not necessarily new planes) and would cost the
FAA itself 15 to 22 billion dollars, and the result -- according to Blakey --
would only be to reduce delays by about 20%, and to reduce noise for 600,000
people. That's 600,000 people net, and there seems to be more
resistance from those who would get more noise than push from people who would
get less.

David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport
Association (which represents US commercial airlines) had a number of
comments in reponse. Among other things, he observed that in 1970, when
Congress established the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, there were 2,500
commercial airplanes and 1,800 corporate jets in the US, and that at the end of
2006, 8,000 commercial airplanes and 18,000 corporate planes were operating
40,000 to 50,000 flights per day in US airspace. He also said that commercial
jets made up 40% of air traffic in the congested Northeast. In her own
remarks, Blakey had commented that corporate aviators should also be prepared
to chip in. I'm going by a news report, so I don't know if ``chip in'' were
her precise words. I imagine that the cheaepest way to chip in would be to
increase spending on Washington lobbyists. What Blakey had in mind was that
``Flying to and from wherever you want whenever you want is not a free utility.
You need to expect to pay for it.''

National (contract) Bridge Organization. The terms national and
country are occasionally used in other than the precise political sense.
For example, the WBF's
page for the
Central American and Caribbean Bridge Federation (visited December 2006)
explains that ``The members of the Central American and Caribbean Bridge
Federation are the National Federations of the affiliated countries.
Currently, the CACBF comprises 24 member countries,
totalling 1,811 registered
players, as follows...'' Among the 24 ``member countries'' are
Anguilla,
Aruba,
Bermuda,
French Guyana,
Guadeloupe,
Martinique,
Netherlands Antilles,
and the US Virgin Islands (140 members),
none of which is an independent country.
District 9 of the
ACBL includes the US territories of Puerto Rico and
the US Virgin Islands, so there's probably a complicated deal there. District
9 has a bit over 1000 members and comprises four ACBL units:
102 (contiguous pieces of Florida's Sarasota and Manatee counties),
219 (the Florida panhandle, from Jefferson County west),
240 (Florida's Seminole, Brevard, Orange, Osceola, and Indian River counties),
243 (Broward County, Florida)
and
128 (the rest of Florida, plus Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands).
I swear, just writing the names of Florida counties gives me
PTSD (the initial trauma having been the 2000
election aftermath).
Bermuda also has some odd kind of deal going. Probably counterclockwise.

An interesting omission is Belize, which is an independent country. (It is
normally regarded as a Caribbean nation, like Trinidad and Tobago, and not as a
Central American country. There's some history behind this.) Belize has
plenty of bridge players and has had a few local clubs over the years; I
suspect they mostly join the ACBL.

National Broadcast Pilots
Association. It is ``an
organization for pilots and crew members flying Electronic News Gathering
aircraft for both television and radio as well as those companies directly
involved in making aerial news possible. We are committed to enhancing safety
for all ENG crew members through better
communication with each other and the local authorities. The association was
formed in 1984 by Leo Galanis with the goal of
having all ENG pilots talking to each other while working in close proximity.
The NBPA now has members in most of the major markets as well as other
countries.''

Since the 1980's, there have been continuing efforts to reform and improve the
quality of teaching in the US. Some reforms are changes in teaching practice
dictated by education bureaucrats, about which this glossary entry will be
tactfully silent. Some reforms involve increasing remuneration for teachers;
it takes special talent to make this idea fail, and -- all other things
being equal -- good teaching follows good money.

A very common reform has been to tighten up teacher certification. In
principle, this ought to work by providing excluding the least able entrants
to the teaching profession or forcing them to improve. In practice, teaching
reforms have coincided with a teacher shortage, so that whenever teacher cert
has threatened to keep significant numbers of incompetent teachers out of
classrooms, states have issued emergency credentials, circumventing the
reform. One benefit of teacher testing has been to demonstrate, by the low
standards that the tests impose, just how serious the problem is. For
references, see

Diane Massell and Susan Fuhrman, Ten Years of Education Reform:
1983-1993 (New Brunswick, NJ: Consortium for Research in Education, 1994).

NBPTS certification is valid for ten years. Application for certification by
the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards requires a $2,000 fee,
as of the 1999-2000 school year. That rises to $2,300 beginning in the
2000-2001 school year. Federal funds provide $1,000 toward the application fee
for those teachers who complete the process, but not all do. The hoops one is
to jump through require 200-400 hours of effort, by estimate of the NBPTS.
Many states offer to defray the cost or guarantee wage increments to those
successfully certified (NBCT's) and/or those who
mentor applicants. The National Education Association (NEA) offers loans as a member benefit for those
seeking national certification.

NBR

National Bureau of Asian Research. The
``National'' refers to the US. It's based in
Washington. That would be Seattle, Washington. That Washington is closer to
Asia, so the bureau has convenient access to Asians who can do whatever sort of
research it is that they do.

The National Baton Twirling Association is the biggest European Association for
twirlers and majorettes. It is dedicated to promoting an interaction between
twirling countries. The association aims to encourage active participation in
twirling countries in Europe, to strengthen the movement internationally and to
stimulate the stage of European and World events. Membership is open to all
those countries who have an association and organise their own National
Championships. Membership is also open for those countries who want to found an
association for twirling and/or majorettes in their country and are looking at
the possibility to become members of NBTA-Europe. They can ask NBTA-Europe for
help to organise it. The member countries are interested in partaking in high
calibre European and/or World Championships. When a country is accepted as a
member of NBTA-Europe they are allowed to represent their country under the
name of NBTA-(name of the country). NBTA-Europe is member of the Global
Association for twirling and majorettes.

Yeah, that does seem to suggest that some people regard twirlers and majorettes
as not quite equivalent sets. Let me know when you figure it out.

National Champion[s[hip]]. NCAA division I-A
football does not have a playoff system. Instead, a perpetually controversial
ranking (see BCS) determines which teams are
eligible to meet in the major Bowl games. A true National Championship is a
pipe dream. Those willing to settle for less than true (the official
``mythical national championship'') can go by the winner of the Fiesta Bowl in
Tempe, Arizona (where the first- and second-ranked
teams play each other) or, particularly if the first-place team loses, the
final poll rankings.

NC

National Coarse. One of two US standards (the other is
NF) for screw dimensions. Speaking of standards...

Various places are generally recognized as the standard-setters for various
specialized productions -- particularly food. Virginia is the name to conjure
with if you're conjuring glazed ham, Boston is the place for baked scrod, etc.
(see the .ca entry for more examples). Boston is
also known for well-educated taxi drivers, the same way
Bhutan is known for piano players (see the ABPT
entry). Haven't you heard this one already? Oh well, for archival purposes,
then.

The cabbie picks up a fare at Logan International
Airport, and as they're headed for the hotel the passenger asks ``do you
know where I can get screwed around here?'' As the driver seems stunned, the
passenger continues ``what's the matter, hasn't anybody asked you that
before?'' The cabbie replies ``sure, but I never heard the regular form of the
past participle before.''

NC

Network Channel.

NC

New Carpet[ing]. An abbreviation in real estate listings or
CMA's, according to The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Buying and Selling a Home (5/e, 2006). I've never seen this
abbreviation, but I know less about this stuff than the authors (Shelley
O'Hara and Nancy D. Lewis). Normally I would just count ghits, but there are
abbreviations used internally in the real estate business that don't show up
very prominently on the Internet. I could probably get a reliable second
opinion from my agent, but she's a resource I'd rather not waste on idle
questions. (I've also never seen
HF,
NF,
NR,
PA,
PO,
or

(Domain name code for) Nouvelle-Calédonie
(a/k/a New Caledonia). I don't know anything about the place,
but I think it would be cool if they were a major manufacturer or consumer or
whatever of chalcedony, about which I don't know anything either. There's
a local government site.

N.C.

No Chord. An indication on guitar music that only the chords should
not be strummed in that section.

I guess if you got here by following the link from the
guitar entry, then the entry so far has been
something of a disappointment. I should add something to make it worth your
while. I'll point out that music for guitar is written on an ordinary (G-clef,
treble-clef) staff, but the pitches represented by notes on the staff are
shifted by an octave for convenience.

NC

No Connection. Pins available for future expansion. Or pins not wired
because standard package has more pins than you need.

See also the Mo. entry for an interesting
folk-etymological connection.

NC

Numerical Control or Numerically Control[led] (machinery or manufacturing).

The term doesn't refer to the Jacquard loom, as you might suppose.

NC is understood to exclude computer numerical control
(CNC). To the operator, NC and CNC machinery seem
much the same: both read a stored program (originally on punched tape,
subsequently on magnetic and optical storage media). In NC machinery, the
instructions are read and performed directly. In CNC machinery, the
program is input to a dedicated computer. CNC machinery may collect data and
communicate with other machines and computers over a network.

Whereas law, medicine, and other professions are largely self-regulated (in the
US) by organizations of practitioners, the teaching profession (at elementary
and secondary levels) is mostly externally regulated, by the states. In most
states, licensing requirements for individual teachers are set by state
education agencies and state boards of education. Similarly, most states have
their own agencies to accredit teacher training institutions, rather than use
NCATE.

NCB

National Certification Body. The IECEE has
developed a CB Scheme to give
manufacturers an expeditious and cost-effective route to certification by
NCB's.

New Caledonia Bridge Federation. I don't know why it's not called
something like la Fédération de Bridge de
Nouvelle-Calédonie. By whatever name, it's one of the
four NBO's comprising the South Pacific Bridge
Federation (SPBF --
Zone 7 of
the WBF).

National Certification
Corporation. It's a US nonprofit corporation ``that provides a [note the
indefinite article] national credentialing program for nurses, physicians and
other licensed health care personnel. Certification is awarded to nurses in
the obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal nursing specialties and certificates
of added qualification are awarded to licensed health care professionals in the
subspecialty area of electronic fetal monitoring.''

National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. A group
founded in 1892, consisting of legal scholars and lawyers who draft model laws.
These have no legal force as such, but their adoption by state legislatures
simplifies interstate commerce by establishing uniformity. State legislatures
often adopt these model laws only in part, but even that has the effect of
clarifying and sequestering the statutory differences among states. The first
uniform law was the Uniform Negotiable Instruments Law, completed by the NCC in
1896. By the early 1920's it had been adopted in whole or in part by every US
state (then in existence). Over 200 model laws have been issued by the NCC,
the most ambitious being the UCC.

Note that even when the letter of the law is the same in different states,
court interpretation may differ, just as British common law is subject to
differing interpretations in the jurisdictions where it holds. Indeed, the
accumulated variety in the latter is the reason that the ALI (q.v.) publishes its Restatements.

NCC

National Council of Churches. Standard shorthand for National Council of
Churches of Christ, which is also abbreviated NCCC (q.v.).

NCC-1701 was (is, will be, whatever) the
Starship Enterprise, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk. James is a gospel and
Kirk means church. There's a Captain Kirke in Wilkie Collins's novel
No Name. For a little more about Collins, read through the entire long
Septimus entry. Hang in there! You're bound
to find something.

Non-Campus
Countries. For the most part, these are countries that participate in the
University of the West Indies (UWI) but do not host
a campus. As of 2004, there are twelve such countries. In addition UWI has a
``special relationship with the Turks and Caicos Islands, so that they are
considered one of the NCCs.''

National Council of Churches of
Christ. Includes ``mainline'' churches of the US, representing about 50
million churchgoers. The organization is widely regarded
as more liberal than its rank and file. An ecumenical body comprising
36 Orthodox and Protestant communions, and 140,000 congregations.

A Constitution class starship, first lauched from the San Francisco
Fleet Yards in 2245, captained by James T. Kirk, a stiff ex-Shakespearean
actor, starting in 2265. Unnerstand? NCC-1701-A through NCC-1701-D
were a refit and successors. There's a locally served shrine.
Look at this
dedicated site for more. Cf.NC-17.

North Carolina
Department of Public Instruction. It's ``the agency charged with
implementing the State's public school laws and the State Board of Education's
policies and procedures governing pre-kindergarten through 12th grade public
education.''

New Chemical Entity. In the US, the first point at which the
FDA becomes officially involved in the development
of a new drug is the ``NCE submission.'' A pharmaceutical company submits data
on an NCE to the FDA, so that the FDA will permit the company to go forward
with animal testing to determine any desirable and undesirable effects.
Companies usually file a patent application at this time or before; the patent
application takes about two years. You wonder just what you can legitimately
report to the FDA or include as claims on a patent application, if you can't
yet have conducted even animal experiments to determine any desirable effects
of the drug.

I haven't sorted out yet whether NCE is a term for any new chemical for which
an NCE submission is made to the FDA, or a classification for only those
compounds which the FDA has approved for further research. Given the catch-22
logic of the process, it probably is required to mean both.

National Council of Examiners for
Engineering and Surveying. Based in Clemson, South Carolina, which used
to have a good football program. Creates examinations in the Fundamentals
of Engineering (FE) and Principles and Practice
of Engineering (PE); these are administered by
state boards which use them to certify engineers. (Specifically, by
an entity that
is typically called the [State] Board [of {Examiners|Registration}] for
[Architects,] [Professional] Engineers and [Professional] [Land] Surveyors''
or something else. There's an
alternate site.] Thank God for the
tenth amendment, huh?) States and
Territories (``other jurisdictions'') differ in their requirements, much as
state bar associations. For example, some allow a PE in one field to
``practice'' in any field.

The exams themselves appear to be rather easy; few will quit working to
study for them. In point of fact, passing the test demonstrates the
ability to do something right, and secondarily to know which
things one is likelier to be able to do right. (I.e., picking
the right answer to a question like ``Do eight of the following
twenty-four problems.'')

This board certification is of very variable utility. From the point of
view of the individual professional, board certification is vital if one
wants to put out a shingle and practice as an independent consultant. It
is least important for the employee in a corporation, where, depending on
the field of engineering concerned, state (or other jurisdiction)
requirements can be satisfied by having one PE who can ``sign off'' on work
done by a non-PE.

The exams are woefully behind the times, but board accreditation is not very
coincidentally unimportant for fields of engineering which are progressing most
quickly. A measure of the depth of the mud they stick in, perhaps, is the fact
that many of the state boards lack email addresses.

National Coalition for Haitian
Rights. ``[S]eeks to promote the rights of Haitian refugees and
Haitian-Americans under U.S. and international law, advance respect
for human rights, the rule of law, and support for civil and democratic
society in Haiti.'' Unsurprisingly and lamentably, they're not having
so much success in Haiti (.ht) as in the US.

National (US) Charities Information Bureau. This was apparently absorbed
by the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB),
which merged it with its Philanthropic Advisory Service (PAS). Or something
like that. Anyway, the website that's left to go to is Give.org of the BBB
Wise Giving Alliance. Or you could give to me.

National Council of La Raza.
Interestingly, one thing that distinguishes Hispanics or Latinos is the fact of
not comprising a single race. I first heard ``la raza'' used by
Mexican-Americans in California, and there it made a
little bit of sense, but NCLR professes to represeent all Hispanics in the US.

Non-Commissioned Officer. A noncom,
q.v. The term ``commission'' is military usage.

NCOD

National Coming Out Day. October 11. Back before mondayized holidays,
Columbus Day was celebrated October 12. That was a kind of coming-in day
(it commemorated Spanish landfall in the New World).
NCOD is not celebrated during the Gay and Lesbian Pride Month of June. See
more under that month at the Hispanic Heritage Month entry.

``Ontology is a fast-growing branch of computer and information science
concerned with the development of tools and theories designed to improve the
integration and processing of data and information from heterogeneous sources.
In response to the needs expressed by a variety of government and industrial
bodies, the University at Buffalo and Stanford University have established the
National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), which is designed to serve as
a vehicle to coordinate and enhance ontology research through the establishment
and dissemination of best practices in ontology development and use.''

Feynman is sniggering in his grave. After all, it's not his tax money.
You can't take it with you.

Network Control Protocol. The original host-to-host communication protocol
of ARPANET, superseded by TCP/IP.

NCPA

National (US) Center for (US) Policy
Analysis. ``[A] nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization,
established in 1983. The NCPA's goal is to develop and promote private
alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying
on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector. Topics
include reforms in health care, taxes, Social Security, welfare, criminal
justice, education and environmental regulation.''

(US) National Capital Planning
Commission. According to itself, it ``provides overall planning guidance
for federal land and buildings in the National Capital Region, which includes
the District of Columbia; Prince George's and Montgomery Counties in Maryland;
and Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties in Virginia,
including the cities and towns located within the geographic area bounded by
these counties. Through its planning policies and review of development
proposals, the Commission seeks to protect and enhance the extraordinary
historical, cultural, and natural resources of the nation's capital.''

Sometimes expanded ``National Capitol Planning Commission.'' Its most
prominent work has to do with the Capitol Mall in DC. (It seems that the
Capitol Mall is officially the National Mall, so it is just the
Capitol mall.)

National Committee for Quality
Assurance. ``[A]n independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to
assessing and reporting on the quality of managed care plans, including
health maintenance organizations (HMO's). They've
been running an accreditation program for managed-care plans since about 1991.

The original cash register was invented by James J. Ritty in 1879. It was
not a convenience, but a way to record transactions and foil larcenous
bartenders in his Dayton, Ohio saloon. ``Ritty's
Incorruptible Cashier'' became the basis of the National Cash Register Company.

George F. Will wrote about this in his 6 April 1989 column. The column is
reprinted in Suddenly (Free Press, 1991), pp. 177-9.

There's a US patent #271,363 issued 1883.01.30 to J. Ritty and J. Birch,
for a ``Cash Register and Indicator.''

No Carbon Required. A kind of multisheet paper form that duplicates on
lower sheets what is written above. It used to be common to do this by
interleaving forms with carbon paper. NCR forms use a microencapsulated dye
precursor on the underside of each sheet (except the bottom). Under pressure,
the microcapsules (1-20 microns in diameter) rupture and release the
transparent dye precursor. This darkens on reaction with a chemical coating or
impregnation of the lower sheet. Typically, the transparent-to-dark reaction
is an acid-base reaction: the precursor a base and the sheet below acidic. So
you can probably erase the copy by applying a strong base, and if you don't
erase it, the unneutralized acid will eventually burn the paper.

NCR paper was invented at the company that became NCR Corporation.
Microencapsulation was first devised in 1950 by Barry Green, a research
scientist at the National Cash Register Company's labs in Dayton (see the NCR entry). On June 30, 1953, he and Lowell
Schleicher, another NCR researcher, applied for a patent for the
microencapsulation system that is used to produce today's carbonless paper.

First funded by NSF in 1985. One of four
NSF-funded Supercomputer centers, along with CTC,
PSC, and SDSC).
Participates with these in MetaCenter.

Generates freeware like NCSA Telnet and Mosaic
(the creators of the latter took their degrees and went off to found Netscape). Conducts HPCC research locally. Grants supercomputer cycles
to academic researchers.

NCSA

Nebraska Council of School
Administrators. If you happen, for some unfathomable reason, to reside
outside of Nebraska, you might find the AASA
homepage more relevant. Of course, if you're not a school administrator
or an administrated school, you might find that a bit dry as well.

In the late 80's, when I went to visit a relative living at a senior facility
in Nottingham, the NCT driver got out and walked behind the back of the bus to
point out exactly where it was. Well, it struck me as unusual.

National Cable Television
Cooperative. ``A programming and hardware buying cooperative, NCTC
represents more than 1,000 independent cable operators, their 6,500 individual
systems and more than 14 million subscribers [across the US].''

The NCTM was founded in 1920 to defend high school mathematics education from
educational reformers. The organization's web site fudges this. Here is how
their mealy-mouthed ``NCTM at a Glance'' begins:

Founded in 1920, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is
dedicated to improving mathematics teaching and learning from
preschool through postsecondary school.

During [the preceding decade] high school mathematics courses have
been assailed on every hand. So-called educational reformers have
tinkered with the courses, and they, not knowing the subject and its
values, in many cases have thrown out mathematics altogether or made
it entirely elective.

There's a simple reason why the NCTM fudges its history: the enemy captured the
fort.

NCTN

NASA Commercial
Technology Network. ``Welcome to the NASA Commercial Technology
Network (CTN)! -- the online resource for moving technology from the lab
to the marketplace.''

NCTR

NonCooperative Target Recognition. You would have thought it went
without saying.

NCTTA

National Competitive Technology Transfer Act of 1989. This might be the
official bloviated name of the Federal Technology Transfer Act (FTTA), I dunno.

``This Film Is Not Yet Rated'' (2006) is a movie about the movie ratings system
overseen by the MPAA. It received a rating of
NC-17 because it includes explicit footage from many films that received an
NC-17 for sexual content.

N.D.

Naturopathic Doctor. Sounds like M.D., looks like a
fatfinger typo of M.D., but ... find out more from their
association.

Notre Dame. Inter alia this is the name of a university in
South Bend, Indiana. They have a famous football team whose name is an ethnic
slur (pugnacious Hibernian). There are a number of Notre Dame domains on the
Internet.

The officially licensed ND merchandise you need in order to breathe in
the South Bend area can be found at
N.D. Sports. However, the place I hear most frequently recommended
for Notre Dame apparel is the Penney's
store in the mall located between State Route 23 and Grape Road in
Mishawaka (the mall is just south of Cleveland Road where it begins to
coincide with SR 23 from the west, and is
bounded on the south by the Indiana Toll Road -- I-80/90). On the
other hand, if you need a gray tee-shirt that celebrates a particular
sport (Notre Dame Baseball, Notre Dame Hockey, Notre Dame Midget
Basketball, etc.), a better bet is Hammes, the Notre Dame Bookstore.

Notre-Dame.com ``is
a fans [sic] guide to buying and selling tickets to all Notre
Dame Fighting Irish college football games, home and away.'' They seem
to be a subsidiary of webtickets.com, a ``private
ticket broker.'' I wonder what the technical difference is between a
private ticket broker and a ``scalper.''

The Golden
Dome, ``your home for Notre Dame Football'' is apparently put
together by Gulf Coast
Recruiting Digest, which ``is committed to bringing you the most
up-to-date information concerning high school football.''

When Gilles, visiting the US from France, went to
buy a ticket from Boston to South Bend, Indiana, the travel agent gave a
knowing smile and said ``ah, football.'' Sure: physicists come from all over
the soccer-playing world to South Bend, Indiana, so they can see the Irish play
college football. And for kicks, they also take in a
computational electronics workshop.
I understand that there's a Notre Dame in
France too, but that it's not a
football powerhouse. (``Hunchback'' -- that must be French for `linebacker.' What does
ESPN have to say about this? ``hunchback is
not a valid Keyword.'' But ``Harry Potter'' is.)

The full formal name of the university is ``University of Notre Dame du Lac,''
or so I had thought. The university is aggressively beyond the city limits of
nearby property-tax-hungry South Bend, and the post office serving the campus
uses ``Notre Dame'' like a municipality name. But perhaps this is less of a
fiction than I thought. According to the 1922 edition of The New
International Encyclopædia (see the education subhead of the Indiana entry, volume 12, p. 94) there were three
institutions of higher education under the auspices of the Roman Catholic
Church at the time: St. Mary's College and Academy for Women, University of
Notre Dame at Notre Dame, and St. Meinrad College at St. Meinrad. It begins to
look like Notre Dame might be a legitimate place name here. This is important,
so I'll have to be sure to sort it out. In fact, it's very important, so I'll
have to proceed very carefully and slowly, next year at the earliest (I need to
calm down).

ND

Nuclear Disarmament. The campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) introduced the ``peace symbol'' at least as
early as 1958. It is an abstracted superposition of the flag semaphores
for the letters en and dee.
A posting by Terry Chan to
<alt.folklore.urban>,
archived here

New Democrat Network. Sounds a lot
like the old DLC. The NDN
``is guided by the belief that there
is a better set of solutions to our challenges then what is being offered in
Washington today. It is the fundamental premise of NDN that we can and must do
better -- as a political movement, as a political party, and as a nation.''
Why does this sound so unobjectionable? Because it doesn't contain any
specifics. You can read the specifics
on this page. Those specifics don't contain any specifics either, but
there are six of them. Eventually I'm sure they reach the point of saying
something that someone could object to or agree with.

Actually, you may have to do a bit of searching on the site now: ``This website
contains the archive of the material of the New Democrat Network, a political
action committee from 1996-2002 and a non-federal political committee from
2003-2006. It also contains information from NDN PAC, which was a federal
political action committee from 2003-2006. You can visit the New Democrat
Network's successor organization, NDN, at www.ndn.org, NDN's think tank for politics, New
Politics Institute, at
www.newpolitics.net and NDN's Blog at
www.ndnblog.org.'' (The quotes are not strict; minor punctuation slips were
repaired. Yes, I mention it because it's relevant; sloppy writing, like sloppy
dressing, may indicate sloppiness in other things. Also, FWIW,
the about page at the NDN site says
that ``the New Democrat Network ... operated from 1996 through 2004.'')

NDOPA

No Dogs Or Philosophers Allowed.
Despite the expansion, not a backlash against cynicism. Diogenes is its favorite
philosopher. NDOPA is described by its creator and host Ken Knisely as
North America's premier philosophy television program, which it may well be.

In the 1980's, Knisely taught (``worked as a philosopher'') in a
public-school program for gifted children in Richmond, Virginia. NDOPA began
as a live call-in program on a public-access channel in Richmond.
One of Knisely's students, Summer Schultz, originated the show's name. She
liked to go barefoot in warm weather, and one day as she was about to enter a
7-11 to buy a Slurpee (a federally noncontrolled addictive
substance that is a known risk factor for brainfreeze), she was stopped by
a sign that said ``No Dogs or Bare Feet Allowed.'' Unfortunately, this made
her think. She reflected on how the great thinkers throughout history had
similarly been treated as pariahs. I guess she must have felt pretty strongly
about going barefoot.

NDP

National Democratic Party (of Germany). The
extreme rightist political party probably better known by its German initialism
NPD.

NDP

National
Democratic Party. The Egyptian government's
political party. That is, the political party that controls Egypt. This
sounds deceptively like ``ruling party'' in a place like France. How can I put this? Egypt is a nominal and
formal democracy.

NDP

Neutron Depth Profiling.

NDP

New Democratic Party. A just-don't-call-it-Socialist-Party, like British
Labour (particularly in that party's Foote-loose days). The most leftist of
the major Canadian political parties. More at
the NPI entry. Don't complain that its politics is
not obvious from its name; in Argentina, the more conservative of the two major
parties is called the Partido Radical. And in France, the Parti
Radical is a centrist party. (The latter's name is a legacy from its days
as an anticlerical party, back when there were still a few Christian clerics in
France.)

The NDP was created in a reorganization of the Co-operative Commonwealth
Federation (CCF) in 1961.

NDPB

Non-Departmental Public Body. Non-departmental in the sense of not being
within the administrative structure of a government ministry, err, department.
Public in the sense of being established and funded by the government. A term
apparently created by UK officialdom to replace an earlier official term:
NDPB's used to be called Quangos officially, and
are still called Quangos.
Here's an exhausting
list of NDPB's that share turf with Defra.

Two kinds of NDR have standard names: N-type and S-type. These simply
refer to current voltage characteristics (CVC for
short) whose shapes resemble the capital block letters N and S,
respectively. In N-type NDR, the current rises to a maximum, falls, and
then rises again. The current is a function of the voltage, although
there is a range of currents for which voltage is undetermined. In S-type
NDR, the current is not a function of voltage, but the current
is function of voltage. Thus, voltage initially increases with
current, then falls, and rises again. Notice that in N-type NDR, the
differential resistance stays finite, following a +,0,-,0,+, pattern,
while the differential conductance diverges (following a pattern +, +inf.,
-inf., -, -inf., +inf., +). Notice also that, since CVC refers to the
I-V plot, and NDR is a most appropriate measure for V-I plots, it might
make more sense to speak of N- and S-type NDC. Setting aside the strictly
semantic issue, however, the important consideration for convenience and
comprehensibility is whether one can deal with a function or must deal
with a mere relation (and with infinite derivatives). For this reason,
devices like tunneling diodes, which exhibit N-type NDR, are described by
I vs. V graphs, while plasma tubes, which exhibit S-type NDR, are
represented with V vs. I plots.

Regions of NDR can be unstable; a device in circuit
follows smoothly whatever segment of the CVC it is on, until that
segment becomes tangent to the load line (this occurs only in a region
of NDR), and then follows another segment of its CVC. (The CVC has an
overall positive slope, while the load line has a negative slope. Thus,
there is always at least one intersection point -- as is physically
reasonable: a solution exists. Also, there will in general be an odd
number of intersections, except when the load line is tangent to the
CVC. At the point of tangency, a stable point and an unstable point
are approaching and in effect annihilating; the number of intersection
points is changing by two.)

In N-type NDR, hysteresis loops are followed clockwise; in S-type NDR,
counter-clockwise.

High-power 532 nm cw is available commercially in packages where high-power
AlGaAs (850 nm) pumps Nd:YAG, and its 1064 nm output is
frequency-doubled in an nonlinear optic crystal. Doubled and tripled
frequencies are typically used to pump dye lasers. Quadrupled-frequency
is also available.

The term is used in the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model for just about any component of a subject
telecommunications network, including switching systems, circuits and
terminals, other than the TMN itself. They're the things the TMN manages.

NE

New England. Some English find amusing the number of tiny places in the
US that are named after much larger cities in England (e.g. Plymouth,
London). In 1995, the combined population of
six small states comprising New England was 13.3 million, when the population
of England was about fifty million. I keep thinking up increasingly useless
things to know.

There's also a Plymouth that is, or has been, the capital of the Caribbean
island of Montserrat, 350 mi. ESE of Puerto Rico. In 1995, the volcano
that brought the island into existence came to life itself, and the capital
and harbor has had to be abandoned, like more than half of the island.

.ne

(Domain name code for) Niger. Landlocked sub-Saharan former
colony and current neocolony of France. Not likely
to be confused with Nigeria (.ng).

NE

NorEpinephrine. A catecholamine
distributed from the locus coeruleus of the brain stem.

The study of newborns. This word is quite rare compared to its synonym
Neonatology. So rare that an unqualified web search for it mostly turns up
plays on genealogy that parallel E-mail (gE-nealogy, E-nealogy, etc.). Cf.ECOFIN, neology.

Expert pet breeders value pure breeds best. But these often fail to thrive,
whereas mixed breeds thrive and are popular. The same seems true of words.
The fastidious lexicographer might disparage automobile,
electrocution, sociology, and television as misbegotten
Latin-Greek half-breeds, but it looks like these words will be with us for a
while.

NEAR

National Electronic Accounting and Reporting (system).

NEAR

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous. A robot spacecraft that's visiting
433 Eros, an asteroid about 25 by 9 by 8.8 miles in size. It did a flyby,
within 2500 miles, on December 23, 1998. The goal is to study it from a
low orbit for about a year and then land, but technical problems have
delayed the attempt until the next close approach in May 2000. Now I read
that ``mission will be completed February 6, 2000.'' Maybe they decided it
would look too bad if they had too many fatal crash landings in a row.

NEAR was the ``first low-cost Discovery mission.'' It used COTS components, less-than-optimal reliability, that
sort of thing. The risk is that even when low-cost missions are
cost-effective, spectacular failures like the Mars lander disappearance
will erode public support.

NEAS+

National Engineering
Aptitude Search+. ``[A] self-administered academic survey that enables
individual students to determine their current level of preparation in
`engineering basic skills subjects' (applied mathematics, science, and
reasoning). The NEAS+ encourages tutoring and mentoring.'' It's a JETS program.

The word you've been looking for: cattle of the genus bos. You know:
``cow or bull.'' The scare quotes are because traditionally, sheep, goats,
hogs and horses are all cattle, and cow and bull are generically the adult
female and (uninterfered-with) male of many animal species. Neat is the
plural and singular form (cf.ships
entry).

The place that English-speakers are most likely to encounter the word
neat in this acception is Shakespeare's ``Julius Caesar,'' in the neat
first scene, spoken by one of the mechanical men:

I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger I
recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather have gone upon my
handiwork.

This is spoken by the second commoner, who, in respect of a fine workman is
but, as you would say, ``a cobbler.'' As you recall, before the ``surgeon''
sentence, he said

Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's
matters, nor women's matters, but with awl.

The recover wordplay might be difficult to recreate in another language
-- German, say. However, the much of the wordplay here turns on the word
awl, and the German word for that happens to be its cognate Ahle.
German also has alle -- an adverb and indefinite pronoun with uses
overlapping those of `every' and (the cognate, of course) `all' in English. So
this is a very translatable bit of wordplay. I was curious how it worked out,
so I checked all the Germaned Shakespeare I could find in the library. No
luck. Here's what I did learn: the first translator of Shakespeare into German
was August Wilhelm Schlegel. His translations made Shakespeare very popular in
Germany. There have been many translations since then, but Schlegel's are so
much the default that I have seen many editions of his translations, at most
minimally reworked, that don't even bother to mention his name. It is
reported, however, that the Schlegel versions now account for only a minority
of German Shakespeare performances. (To be precise, one should note that the
task of translating Shakespeare into German was eventually completed by Ludwig
Tieck, Tieck's daughter Dorothea, and her husband Graf von Baudissin. But
Schlegel did do the Julius Caesar.) I did find some incomplete Shakespeare
translations by others, but no Julius Caesar.

I've read differing opinions on the matter, but at least according to some,
Schlegel was most accepting of the bard's puns. Certainly in this same scene
under discussion here, Schlegel was resourceful. For example, the wordplay
between the precise and loose senses of cobbler is fairly reproduced by
having the cobbler say that he does patchwork. (``Die Wahrheit zu gestehn,
Herr, gegen einen feinen Arbeiter gehalten, mache ich nur, sozusagen,
Flickwerk.'') Similarly, the first quoted item above becomes:

Here the pun on recover is translated with a pun one could imagine the
bard himself using in its place: the cobbler makes old shoes whole again. (In
German, heil is `unhurt,' cognate with English heal and
hale. Also, heil is an old-fashioned way of saying `whole.'
It's found in Bible translations, which dates it roughly to Shakespeare's
time.) But the bit preceding this, with the awl pun, Schlegel simply skipped.
It's just barely possible that Schlegel translated from a version that didn't
include that line -- I'll have to look into this.

neat

One Sunday in the Summer of 1982 or thereabouts, William Safire's ``On
Language'' column in the New York Times Magazine was about the language of
ordering mixed drinks. One of the terms mentioned was neat, meaning
pure, unadulterated (sc., with water: undiluted). It reminds me of Dr.
John Snow and the Broad Street pump. Read about it
here. (That's an external site. I didn't write it. I know better than to
write ``drunk'' for drank, even in this context.) The brewery workers
were unharmed.

It turns out that this sense (pure, unadulterated fluid) dates back at least to
the sixteenth century. In the twentieth century, according to the
OED (June 2005 draft revision), it was extended to
mortar -- neat mortar being made from cement and water only, and no sand. In
fact, the adjective is widely used for fluids (particularly solvents and
polymer resins) in chemistry and in chemical industries. It's a useful word
because it doesn't mean quite the same thing as pure or
unadulterated. These words are contrasted to impure -- they imply that
the adulteration is dirty or generally undesirable. Also, ``impurities''
would generally be present in small quantities at most. Neat does not
imply either of these things. It is used in situations where admixture may
often be desirable, and in substantial amounts. (It is also used in situations
where admixture generally does occur, and gives one a way of emphasizing
that one is discussing properties of the pre- or un-mixed fluid.)

The adjectives neat and net are ultimately from the
Latinnitidus. The root was widely borrowed
from Romance into Germanic languages; in German, nett means `nice' and
netto means `net' (the adjective,
opposed to brutto, `gross').

The German transliteration of a Yiddish word. Yiddish is written in Hebrew
characters. Very roughly 10% of Yiddish is Hebrew words, which are written in
the traditional, if not especially consistent, standard Hebrew orthography.
Because of the different phonology, the non-Hebrew component of Yiddish is
written using different letter-sound correspondences than the Hebrew. The
range of variation in Yiddish pronunciation (among native speakers, never mind
people who pick up a few mispronounced words of it) is sufficiently large that
a consistent phonetic orthography is impossible. FWIW, Yiddish was officially
standardized around 1938. Anyway, Yiddish is basically a Middle High German
with a lot of loanwords from Slavic (in the dominant eastern dialects) or
French (in the
western ones) in addition to Hebrew, and it's within the range of regional
German languages, so the fairly phonetic German spelling provides a convenient
mode of transcription. I guess the specific thing I'm trying to say here is
that the ich at the end of the head term here is pronounced like the
German pronoun ich, and not like the English noun itch.
(Nebbich is of Slavic origin, BTW.)

The word, however spelled, is fundamentally an interjection, an expression of
pity or resignation, as if to say ``oh well, what can you expect?'' It is also
used as a dismissive noun, to describe a nullity of a person, someone who can't
be expected to amount to anything, someone to be half pitied and half
contemned, though there is no suggestion of malign intent.

nebbish

An English word derived from the Yiddish word
nebbich, used as a
noun. It has the same meaning as the Yiddish noun:
a person pitiful for lack of ability or drive, someone understandably
unsuccessful. This isn't quite the same as a ``no 'count,'' because a no
'count is likelier to be considered lazy. Also, a nebbish is not the
same as a shlimazel. A shlimazel is just habitually unlucky.

The esh sound in the English word is an approximation to the ekh sound in the
original word, but the esh sound is also common in Yiddish. The people I have
known who were native speakers of Yiddish, or of German, Spanish, or any other language with an ekh sound,
have tended not only to pronounce the word more correctly but also to use it
primarily as an interjection. Those who use the esh pronunciation also use it
only as a noun. This gave me the impression, at one point, that there were two
words: the noun nebbish and the interjection nebbich. This is
almost true, and if the latter pronunciation were able to survive, it might
even become true.

Latin for `cloud.' Term used for various astronomical objects. See
discussion at Messier catalog (``M###'') entry.
Also the name of a Science Fiction ``writing'' award, probably
in honor of the turbidity of the writing.

According to an email announcement from the executive director in February
2004, NECTFL is

... a 50-year-old association of language educators at all levels and in all
instructional contexts. NECTFL publishes a bi-annual refereed journal and
holds a conference every year in the spring. For the next five years, we will
be in New York at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
... About 2,500 people attend the conference, from 40 states and 15 countries
around the globe. ...

NEC 9801

A series of 386/486 machines once popular in
Japan. Loosely
PC-DOS-compatible OS.
In 1990, the `DualStation 386SX/16' from
AST was the first ``dual compatible
Japanese NEC 9801 standard and U.S. DOS standard computer.''

Noise Emitting Diode. All kinds of diodes can be used in this mode,
where a high applied voltage triggers a single sharp ``crack'' or ``pop.''
Existing models do this once and enter a permanent ``off'' state.

NEDB

National Enrollment DataBase.

NEEAN

New England Educational Assessment Network.

NEED

National (US) Energy Education
Development.
``The mission of the NEED Project is to promote an energy conscious and
educated society by creating effective networks of students, educators,
business, government and community leaders to design and deliver objective,
multi-sided energy education programs.''

I hear a lot about the ``need to communicate.'' Couples counseling,
business seminars, they're all into that communication thing. Can we talk?
Look, I'm willing to concede that there is often a need to communicate. But
there is often also a need not to communicate -- to leave unsaid that
which should not be said or which would cost the sayer, to not talk over
what one person does and another person won't understand. Why don't I hear
more about that, huh? Huh?

Neet

Not in Education, Employment, or Training. A neat abbreviation used in
employment demographics.

nefarious perversion of science

Scientific demonstration of something the speaker wishes were not so.

NEG

NEGative.

negative gas pressure

Perhaps you heard an expression like ``minus six torr.'' That's short
for ``one-millionth (10-6) torr.'' Practical ultrahigh vacuum
pressures range down to around ``minus eleven torr.''

negative logic

Any electronic implementation of logic in which a low voltage levels
represents True, and a high voltage level represents a
False. In the early (pre-IC) days of
digital logic, this was widely used and made intuitive sense in terms of
switching logic:
``True'' meant connected to ground. False meant
disconnected, so that in many circuits, the voltage level for
False was much less well defined than that for
True = ``1'' = gnd., though it was generally positive.

Negative logic is very unusual these days. The choice is essentially
arbitrary, but with switching logic rare, the confusion of ``1'' = 0 volts
might be decisive. Note that what matters is the relative position of the
voltages, not the absolute voltage. Thus, standard
ECL, which for noise
reasons does use ``1'' = VCC = 0 volts = ground, is a
positive logic because logic ``0'' is at a lower (a negative) voltage.
Cf.positive logic.

neglect

G.K. Chesterton's William
Cobbett (1925) begins with a chapter that he originally planned to
title ``The Neglect of Cobbett,'' but which later events induced him to call
``The Revival of Cobbett,'' how prematurely I don't know. He comments there
``that it is not until the first beginnings of the revival that we ever even
hear of the neglect. Until that moment even the neglect is neglected.'' (I'm
not claiming this is true, as Chesterton did, but perhaps you'll agree that it
displays some cleverness.)

In fact, according to its homepage, ``[t]he New England Institute is an
initiative ... [much verbiage excised] ...
[for] cognitive
science and evolutionary psychology.'' I learned about this institute in a
conference announcement that began ``[t]he New England Institute for Cognitive
Science and Evolutionary Psychology (NEI) invites papers...'' Obviously, the
original naming of this institute was highly incompetent.

neither would nor could

Here are a couple of typical instances of this construction:

From Samuel Richardson's Clarissa; or, The History of a Young
Lady:

Inwardly vexed, I told him, That he himself had proposed to leave me
when I was in town: That I expected he would: And that, when I was
known to be absolutely independent, I should consider what to write,
and what to do: But that, while he was hanging about me, I neither
would nor could.

[Letter from Miss Clarissa Harlowe to Miss Howe -- #43 in the first
edition (1747-48), #41 in the third (1751). Clarissa is in the
you'll-be-sorry-when-I'm-dead novel subgenre. It's another epistolary
novel, like Richardson's morally despicable landmark
Pamela.]

And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the coach coming up behind me (though I still
knew that it neither would, nor could, do any such thing), that I ran
the greater part of the way, to avoid being overtaken.

Here's an atypical one, with the word neither functioning as a pronoun,
that might cause the non-native reader some difficulty. From Whittaker
Chambers's Witness (1952), referring to himself and Alger Hiss together
in the third person:

Neither would nor could yield without betraying, not himself, but his
faith; and the different character of these faiths was shown by the different
conduct of the two men toward each other throughout the struggle.

Incidentally, Virginia Woolf's ``Mrs. Dalloway'' was a Clarissa also.
According to
the Census of 1990, Clarissa was the 744th most common name for
females in the US.

Has referred, in particular, to the electromagnetic pulse generated by nuclear
blast. A few years and many events ago, in a climate of feeling called the
``Cold War,'' one of the panics of the West was fed by the thought that even a
``small'' nuclear attack might disable defense systems by EMP, and that solid
state systems were more vulnerable to EMP than vacuum
tube electronics. Fears increased when a North Korean fighter pilot
defected to Japan with his plane, of the model
called Foxbat in the West. It turned out to have some vacuum tube electronics
on board.

NEMS

NanoElectroMechanical System[s]. Just like MEMS (q.v., but on the scale of 10-100
nanometers rather than 1 micron (1000nm).

NENA

National Emergency Number
Association. ``NENA's mission is to foster the technological advancement,
availability, and implementation of a universal emergency telephone number
system.'' The particular number they have in mind is 911.

Their Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations
publishes a Journal of Ancient Civilizations.

My impression from this and one or two other cases is that much of the trade
in scholarly journals about classical antiquity is conducted on a barter
system -- the classics department or other entity to which the main editor
belongs trades free subscriptions to its own journal for free subscriptions
to those of other institutions.

NEO

Near-Earth Object. Stuff that comes too close for comfort. Read up on
your NEO basicsNOW, before
it's too late for you to do anything about it!
(The introduction is offfered by NASA's NEO
Program.)

neologism

The act of coining a new word or (less often) phrase. More often, the new
word (or perhaps phrase) coined.

New Economic Plan. Introduced by Lenin. Either it didn't work, or
it wasn't tried. Okay, okay: it was a brief period during which the program of
nationalization and collectivization was slowed and to some degree reversed.

NEP

Noise-Equivalent Power. The integral of the noise region of the power
spectrum.

NEPA

National Electric Power Authority. In Nigeria.
See -- bunko spam is good for something. It's
educational. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get educated
at the lowest possible cost.

NEPA

National (US) Environmental Policy Act.

NEPA

(PRC) National Environmental Protection Administration. The PRC's highest
(ministerial) administrative authority in environmental management. Since
1998, its name is more usually translated as State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA).

NEPAD, Nepad

NEw Partnership for Africa's
Development. The sense in which this is supposed to be a partnership is
that both sides contribute something to Africa's development. The West
contributes more money and African governments contribute better governance.
You know, this is very reasonable, and it shows a very generous and enlightened
attitude about where responsibility lies for the disaster and tragedy that is
Africa today. The West has a track record of providing money, and African
governments have a record of providing governance. To those who complain that
the governance provided has been inadequate, there is the ready answer that the
money provided has been insufficient. Indeed, those least disposed to credit
this argument would have to admit that with African governments as immoral and
incompetent as they are, no amount of aid would be sufficient.

I hope that NEPAD is pronounced ``knee pad,'' because it fosters thoughts of
the situations, or postures, that require the use of a knee pad.

Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application. The NERVA program was
initiated in 1961 by the joint AEC/NASA Space Nuclear Propulsion Office. The main
contractor was Westinghouse. Aerojet General Corporation also took part, and
LANL, which had performed the earlier KIWI research on NTP, participated in a
consultative role.

NES

National Eutrophication Study.

n.e.s., N.E.S.

Not Elsewhere Specified. The most lawyerish-sounding abbreviation in
engineering.

NES

Network of Emerging
Scientists. ``NES was founded as a vehicle for open discussion and
level-headed activism regarding national science policy, scientific
infrastructure, science education, and a number of other issues like
immigration that not only concern emerging scientists but also may affect
their employment and funding opportunities.''

It was founded (around 1996) because for years, major science advisory
organizations kept foreseeing a coming shortage of scientists, yet newly-minted
science Ph.D.'s kept seeing a job shortage. I stopped by the website in 2005,
and it looks like it's been moribund since 1999. My theory is that this
occurred because science Ph.D.'s keep seeing a job
shortage.

NESB

Non-English-Speaking Background. Usage seems restricted to Australia and
New Zealand. Used attributively, as in ``NESB parents.'' This nicely manages
to express the idea that the parents may or may not speak English, but that it
is probably not their first language. It also avoids including any notion of
immigration or foreign status; this is useful if there may be native-born NESB people. Contrast the infelicitous
``LEP.''

Ignorance or agnosticism. It is perhaps appropriate that no one is
really sure how this rare word should be pronounced, and that no one is
willing to assert that any of the many pronunciations used is wrong.

NorthEast
Snowstorm Impact Scale. A scale developed by Paul J. Kocin of The Weather
Channel (TWC) and Louis W. Uccellini of the NOAA/NWS National Centers
for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The scale is
based on snowstorm records primarily
from 1950 to 2000 (or from 1950 to 2003) and ranks snowstorms from 0 to 8 (or 1
to 5, apparently in a later version), according to the paper of Kocin and
Uccellini linked above (or according to a news report on TWC, broadcast
November 29, 2003). ``Impact'' refers to
disruption along the Northeast Urban Corridor that extends from southern
Virginia to New England. (In contrast, hurricane and tornado scales indicate
destructive rather than disruptive power.) Storms rated 1
are common. Storms rated above 4 are the kind that people remember as ``the
blizzard of [some year].''

The following is from the second act of Thorton Wilder's play
``The Skin of Our Teeth'' (1942). Antrobus is the inventor of the wheel (Act
I), etc.

ANTROBUS: Oh, that's the storm signal. One of those black disks means bad
weather; two means storm; three means hurricane; and four
means the end of the world.

Later in Wilder's play,
unnoticed
by anyone but the audience (to the best of my recollection), the storm signal
progresses to four discs.

NET

National Educational Television.

NET

No Electronic Theft Act. An ``Act'' in the sense of US Congressional
action, not an act in the sense of an action that might be a theft. I hope the
distinction is clear.

NET

Nottingham Express
Transit. As of 2002 NET was, in the mathematical sense of the qualifier,
an improper net, in the same way that an empty set is an improper subset
of every set (and every set is an improper subset of itself). Put a little
more directly: NET had no lines. The first line went on-line March 9, 2004.
Alternative link: <thetram.net>.
The trams are integrated with the bus system, NCT.

The first time I went to England, I visited London, Cambridge, and Nottingham,
in that order. Coming out of the train station at Nottingham, my immediate
reaction was ``Oh wow! Life-size!'' (Well, the taxi area was cavernous, but
I was not misled.)

NET-based grassROOTS support. (Parodic dysphemism:
``nutroots.'') As everyone recognizes, the
left and right engage in the political equivalent of ``asymmetric combat.'' A
prayer vigil for choice is about as likely as a sit-in for lower capital-gains
taxes. Likewise, though the left and right both use the net, they do so
differently.

Both sides use it to state and sometimes argue for their positions, but
rebuttal and refutation seem to be more popular with the right, and
meta-analysis more popular with the left. Politically selective match-making
sites seem still to be a specialty of the right -- you might argue that it
represents a demographic political grand strategy. Organizing and raising
money for (immediate) off-net political activities seem to be a specialty of
the left. So netroots in practice are usually netroots on the left. Marshall
Wittmann, a conservative (Republican) activist in the 1990's and a
senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council
as of 2006, seems
to be the one who coined the description ``McGovernites with modems.'' See
Kos.

``This page works
correctly in Netscape 4 (any release) and in Internet Explorer 4 and up. If
you have reached this page, you are either using Netscape 6, or are not using
a Java enabled browser. To download Netscape 4, click here.''

Progress marches on, but this entry will remain encased in amber.

Network Outrages!

Heading on a list of times and sites, posted on the computer-lab doors.
Oh, just noticed they used the alternate spelling: ``Network Outages!''

netto

German: `net' (as opposed to gross). Used pretty much like the
English word: as an adjective applied to weight and to monetary amounts, and as
a noun (capitalized) implicitly referring to the
same quantities. (Of course, historically these were not so different, as for
a long time money was defined in terms of standardized weights of precious
metals; vide Hacksilber.) See also
grosso, `gross' for a usage note.

Any journal which aspires to international standing is well advised to become
accessible to a large audience. Even among linguists, the Finnish language is
singularly inaccessible,
and this journal is published by a Helsinki linguistics society. In
consequence, the official title has never been in Finnish. On the other hand,
when the journal was founded at the end of the nineteenth century, no one
pretending to be a linguist could fail to know German; researchers working in
German were probably the largest group of linguistics scholars. So it was
very reasonable to name the journal in German. Also, Swedish was a very widely
used language in Finland at the time, so Finnish linguists would have found it
relatively easy to learn other Germanic languages. In fact, Swedish was at the
time a very important language in Finland -- in many respects more important
than Finnish. Let's talk about that.

During the height of Viking activity in the eighth to the eleventh centuries,
Swedes settled along the southwestern coast of Finland. Starting in the twelfth
century, Russia began to be an independent military power, and Finland became a
battleground between Russian and Swedish empires. In a series of religious
crusades and other wars, Finland came increasingly under Swedish control until,
in 1323, the Treaty of Pähkinäsaari established a border between
Russian and Swedish spheres of influence. (Separated by a fuzzy line running
from the eastern part of the gulf of Finland, through the middle of Karelia and
thence northwest to the Gulf of Bothnia -- there, does that help? Any line
that manages to separate two spheres, whether of influence or anything else, is
bound to fuzzy or otherwise differ in some way from a classical Euclidean line.)
Anyway, the Finnish tribes were now all in Swedish territory, and the area that
would become Finland was administered by Swedes under a few different kinds of
Swedish governments (over time), enforcing Swedish laws. Finland was a rural
appendage that Sweden controlled, something vaguely like Ireland to the British
Empire. During the height of Swedish imperial power in the seventeenth
century, the Finnish upper classes became increasingly integrated into the
Swedish kingdom's clerical and governmental classes, and came increasingly to
speak Swedish.

Sweden's imperial power declined sharply during Charles XII's reign, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. Finland became for Sweden a kind of
buffer territory. Over the course of various Russian occupations and
Swedish-Russian wars in that century, Finnish leaders (i.e., Swedish-speaking
officials of the Swedish government, mostly of Finnish origin by the middle of
the century) began to see greater benefits as a Russian than as a Swedish
frontier province, and thought they might achieve greater local autonomy under
Russian domination. (``Finlandization'' is older than you thought.) In 1809,
the Finns negotiated a peace with Tsar Alexander I in which Finland became a
grand duchy under his throne, with a Russian-chosen administration. Finland
prospered and grew under this conservative administration. There's more to
know about this, and you can know some of it by reading it elsewhere.

Since this is an entry about a linguistics journal, I'm going to twist this
history back around to a discussion of language. The Tsar...
Look, I happen to be in the middle of writing this entry. I'm just saving my
work so I can go and take a leak. I'll be back before you know it, because
I won't save my work again until after I've been back for a while. The main
thing is, Swedish was the language of education and the educated classes when
the journal was begun, so German and other Germanic languages were natural
second languages for the founders of the journal. I think I said something
like that before, in the early days of this entry.

So the journal was named in German, and the title was written in a slightly
daring irregular font, described immediately below as
herausgegeben vom Neuphilologischen Verein in Helsingfors.
In subsequent forms, the title page has caused some confusion.
(Starting with the 1938 edition, ``Helsingfors'' has been ``Helsinki.'')

The journal got off to a slightly bumpy start. Originally, it was intended to
be published in eight issues per year. These were not numbered but dated, the
fifteenth of a month. The first year (1899) the issues were dated 15/1 (11
printed pp.), 15/2, 15/3, 15/4, 15/9-15/10, 15/11-15/12. (Except for the first
issue, each was 8pp. or, for the double issues, 16 pp.). The second year
started with a double-size triple issue 15/1-15/3 (16pp.), then 15/5 (22
pp.), 15/9-15/10 (12 pp.), and 15/11-15/12 (18 pp.). So people got nine
issues for their 4 FIM that year (in 68 pp.). This extravagance could not go
on, and sure enough, the first issue of the third Jahrgang begins with a
letter `To our readers' (An unsere Leser) describing the inauspicious
financial circumstances under which the century was beginning; 15/1-15/3/1901
(32 pp.), 15/4-15/5 (36 pp.), 15/9-15/10 (25 pp.), 15/11-15/12 (26 pp.).

When the journal was founded, no educated European could fail to know French,
and so the contributions were about equally split between French and German.
The following observations about languages occurring in the early issues are
based on a quick scan rather than a thorough study.
It's not clear whether there was an official policy about languages or just
some reasonable expectation. In any case, the first contribution in a third
language was an English-language review (by a Swedish-surnamed Finn) of two
German English books: Grammatik der englischen Sprache and Lehrbuch
der englischen Sprache, pp. 21-22 of the 15/5 issue. Most reviews were in
French or German regardless of the language in which the books themselves were
written (e.g., Ny-islandsk lyrik, oversoettelser og studier af Olaf
Hansen, published in Copenhagen, was reviewed in German), but some of the
other English books reviewed got English-language reviews. The fourth language
to be used was Danish, in two letters from Karl Verner, published in the 1903
issue of 15/9-15/100 (pp. 91-109 -- page numbering became consecutive through
the year after 1902). The first letter is full of linear algebra and seems to
have to do with physical rotations by multiples of 15 degrees, and the second
is full of drawings of machinery. The issue has a fold-out chart of
calculations. It's all about technology for studying phonetics, one century
ago.

You get a spooky feeling looking through those early issues. There's a review
of yet another new edition of Johann Peter Eckermann's Gespräche mit
Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, of works by Henry Sweet and
Victor Hugo...

The first article other than a book review to appear in English was Anna
Bohnhof's lead article in the 15/4-15/5/1903 issue: ``The Mystery of William
Shakespeare'' (pp. 39ff). It begins

In 1848 a certain Mr. J. C. Hart of America threw out some
doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays in a book, called The
Romance of Yachting, whether in joke or in earnest we do not know. This
gave rise to the theory that Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays. A
controversy began, which has lasted until the present day and will last while
»good and sound knowledge will putrify and dissolve into a number of
subtle, idle, unwholesome and vermiculate questions, which have indeed a
quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of
quality», as Bacon says in his Analysis of the Abuses of Learning.

I have reproduced the quotation marks as they appear in this article and in
all articles, regardless of language. It's a sickening precursor of the ugly
C++cin usage.

For 1904 they gave up the calendar-date scheme and started numbering the issues.
I'm going to have to look more carefully to see if I can find any sign of the
revolt in Finland that coincided with the 1905 Russian revolution.

The history of Finland in the twentieth century is reflected rather oddly in
this journal. For example, the greatest Finnish upheavals associated with WWI
and the Russian revolution were in 1917, yet in 1916 there was no volume, and
volume 18 began in 1917 with the following notice (in number 1-4):

German for `neo-romanticism.' A neo-romantic [writer] is ``ein
Neuromantiker,'' and his writing is neuromantisch. Funny how the
base word is the movement in German and the adjective or practitioner in
English. Well, maybe not side-splitting funny, but at least wan-smile funny,
okay? Yeah, yeah, puzzled-look funny, knitted-brow, whatever. [Actually, the
-ik ending in German often corresponds to -ics in English
(e.g., Physik is `physics'). So it's really just an instance
where English happened to go with romanticism rather than
romantics. Just don't get me started on chiropractic.]

I only put this entry in because it caught my eye. If you're not expecting it,
even if you're reading about the popular writer Ludwig Fulda (whose only
connection with
nerve-neuro-anything was that he committed suicide in despair in 1939), you
start reading neur... and you expect something like Neuritis or
Neurom (`neuroma'). (FWIW, neu Rom is ungrammatical, but
das neue Rom is `the new Rome,' an epithet currently applied mostly to
the US. ``Das neue ROM'' is the ROM update.
``Der neue Roman'' is `the new novel,' which looks a bit redundant in
English. Etymologically, of course, it's something like ``the new romance.''
``Der neue Römer'' is `the new Roman.') The initial ambiguity of the word
Neuromantik reminded me of unionized,
though I can't find quite as perfect a homographic situation along those lines
for neur-. Of course, if you stare at even an innocent word like
``neoromantic'' for too long, that starts to look weird too -- especially if
your eyes start to go and you start seeing ``necromatic,'' which looks like the
worst of necromancy, necrophilia, and movie Draculas combined.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil that ``he who fights
with monsters might take care that in so doing he not become a monster. And if
you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you, also.'' [If the
tenses, verb aspects, and grammatical persons seem jumbled there, don't blame
me. I'm just being faithful to the original: ``Wer mit Ungeheuern
kämpft, mag zusehen, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und
wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich
hinein.'']

neurotransmitter amines

Amines mediate perhaps 5% of neurotransmission, but they are the best
understood or most easily studied part of the process. Known neurotransmitters
include acetylcholine, dopamine (relevant to
Parkinson's and schizophrenia), norepinephrine and serotonin. [The famous
antidepressant or ``mood brightener'' Prozac is a
serotonin-specific re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI).]

never ever

never.

never ever ever

rarely.

never ever ever ever

not that I can recall, offhand.

never ever ever ever ever

I'm ten years old. How old are you?

Never forget that...

Just take my word for it that...

A favorite locution of Nixon (RMN), along with
``Remember:'' and various trite football analogies.

Another popular rhetorical tool along these lines is the more
schoolteacherish ``when you consider that...''

New Class, The

A component of the classless society. You remember the classless society:
the workers' paradise. Anyway, the New Class was the class of the classless
society, so to speak -- the elite. Eventually it was called the Nomenklatura.
This is all in English; I have no idea what it was called in Russian.

Alright, let's get to work and take this entry to the next level. The head
term was coined by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin around 1870. You know, this
would be a good place to say something about Bakunin. Nowadays, I imagine that
Bokonon is better known than Bakunin, because more high-school students are
required to read Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 sci-fi novel Cat's Cradle than are
required to know very much about Europe, such as the fact of its existence.
Vonnegut's Bokonon invents a new religion to distract the people of the island
of San Lorenzo from their miserable lives. ``What is sacred to Bokononists?
Not God; just one thing: man.'' I imagine there are some analogies between
Bokonon and Bakunin. Eh.

The novel is about the end of the wold. Oh no, the end of the world! It turns
out (for the purposes of this fiction) that at room temperature, liquid water
is thermodynamically unstable -- supercooled. (That is, even though it's
cooled below the true ``freezing point,'' so that a solid phase is
thermodynamically more stable than the liquid phase, it's still liquid because
its molecules haven't happened to jump through the microscopic metaphorical
hoops necessary to make the transition.) That (fictional) thermodynamically
stable solid form of water at room temperature is an allotrope of ordinary ice
called ice-9. The kinetic barrier to formation of a crystal of ice-9 is so
high that it hasn't happened naturally on the earth's surface yet. A scientist
has created it, however, and eventually it is accidentally released into the
ocean and seeds the sudden crystallization of the oceans. This isn't really a
spoiler because Vonnegut tells you right at the start of the novel that the
world will end and pretty much how.

As a matter of fact, water does have a number of allotropes. The usual
hexagonal form stable at moderately low temperatures and ordinary pressures is
called Ih in a notation introduced by P.W. Bridgman.
There's another low-pressure form that is cubic, designated Ic.
This form is kinetically favored at very low temperature: under the appropriate
conditions, it forms more readily than ice Ih. Nevertheless, it is
probably not stable. It's hard to determine. Other forms are
assigned higher Roman numerals -- II, III, .... The numbers assigned to stable
phases go up to about XII or XIII, as best I can recall, but exclude IX. The
reason is that there is a form that was originally numbered IX (a solid form
that occurred below room temperature), but which was later discovered to be
metastable, so it doesn't appear on a chart of stable allotropes. (None of
these solid allotropes is stable at anything like room temperature and ordinary
pressure. I seem to recall that ``ice 9'' was used in another scientific
context besides a water-ice allotrope, but I can't recall where.)

So there is an ice IX, but, like many of the observed phases, it is metastable:
thermodynamically disfavored.
The apt (or at least scientifically ironic) choice of the number nine to
designate the dangerous allotrope is unlikely to be coincidence. Kurt Vonnegut
had an older brother who became a physicist. Cat's Cradle, like much
of Kurt Vonnegut's work one way or another, is autobiographical; the narrator
of the story has an older brother who's a scientist also.

[Kurt's older brother Bernard was a well-known meteorologist who discovered
that silver-iodide smoke could seed rain. See his sole-authored paper, ``The
Nucleation of Ice Formation by Silver Iodide,'' Journal of Applied
Physics, vol. 18, pp. 593-595 (1947). The premise of Kurt's book is
a ``phase-shifted'' version of this, if you will. I also recall a paper of
Bernard Vonnegut concerning the wind speed required to pluck the feathers from
chickens, but I haven't tracked it down yet. The closest I can come up with is
D. Keller and B. Vonnegut:
``Wind Speeds Required to Drive Straws and Splinters Into Wood,'' Journal of
Applied Meteorology, vol. 15, pp. 899-901 (1976).]

Let's talk about Bakunin. Okay, I'll talk about Bakunin, you listen.
Back in 1843, Richard Wagner became Kapellmeister of the Royal Opera in Dresden
(patience -- we'll get to Bakunin!). Come 1848, when revolutions roiled
the European continent (but failed to jump the Channel -- another of those
kinetic barriers, I suppose), Wagner publicly positioned himself on the left,
and that year also he met Bakunin. For various reasons, among them that it was
center of the publishing industry, Saxony had a somewhat anomalous political
situation in the Germanies, so revolution (and its suppression) came late
there.

Dresden is the capital of Saxony. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war there
when the city was fire-bombed near the end of WWII,
and he survived the firestorm in Schlachterhaus
Fünf. He draws on
those experiences in a book whose title is the translation of this designation:
Slaughterhouse Five. See also L.T.I.

It's very hard to believe today, but Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was rarely
performed in the years after his death in 1827. (All of Beethoven's late works
were neglected, but the Ninth required a large number of instrumentalists and
vocalists.) Wagner attended a poor performance of it in Dresden, and then in
Paris in the Winter of 1839-40 he was inspired by a brilliant performance given
by the Conservatoire orchestra. Partly by using cost-saving measures such as
employing volunteer extras, Wagner overcame objections to the cost and staged a
performance of the symphony in 1846.

In 1849, Wagner staged another performance of the Ninth Symphony. At the end
of March that year, Bakunin was in the audience for the final rehearsal. (He
was also at the time on the run from the police of many different countries, so
attending a rehearsal rather than a public performance had advantages.) After
the rehearsal, Bakunin approached Wagner and said that ``even if all music were
lost in the approaching world fire, they should risk their lives for the
survival of that symphony.'' (The quotation marks enclose my translation of
``...sie
sollten, wenn beim nahen Weltenbrand auch alle Musik verlorenginge,
für den Erhalt dieser Sinfonie ihr Leben wagen.'') As it happens, the
Dresden Opera House, though not quite the whole world, burned down the
following May 6.

Well, you know: Dresden, fire, and ice. It struck me as an interesting bunch
of connections. Incidentally, the verb wagen, which I translated as
`risk' above, is etymologically unrelated to the English word wager
(from Anglo-French). Instead, that
noun is related by a torturous route that I won't
trace to the noun Wagen, which is cognate with the English wagon.
(Cf. the VW entry and
footnote 31.)
The surname Wagner means carter or wagon-maker.

Wagner took part in the Dresden uprising in May, and when it was put down he
narrowly escaped arrest with the help of Franz Liszt. He went into exile,
spending a few years in Zurich, Switzerland. (He was amnestied in 1862.)

Gee, I almost forgot about the New Class. Bakunin coined the term and used it
with something close enough to its current meaning. This is moderately
impressive, considering that no Marxist revolution had ever yet taken place to
provide empirical evidence. (Though frankly, 1789, 1830, and 1848 provided
some good clues to 1917.) (I ain't talkin' Sudoku here, BTW.) Look, I don't
really know anything about this. Let me quote some experts, such as Lawrence
Peter King and Iván Szelényi, authors of The New Class:
Intellectuals and Power (U. Minn. Pr., 2004). At some places, this book
looks like a bad translation from the German, so it must be really
well-researched. King and Szelényi write on page vii (you didn't expect
me to delve deep into the actual text, did you?):

Bakunin accused Marx of advancing a theory that was actually a project by
the intelligentsia to exploit the working-class movement. By pretending to
represent working-class interests, intellectuals sought to establish themselves
as a new dominant class after the fall of capitalism and the propertied
bourgeoisie. History did not follow Bakunin's forecast: while intellectuals in
the first Marxist-inspired revolution, the Russian Revolution of 1917, did play
a formidable role, soon after their victory not only were they squeezed out of
power positions by the Stalinist bureaucracies, but many of them perished in
the Gulag.

But though he foresaw to some degree that socialism on Marxist principles would
be dictatorship by a new elite, Bakunin was not the person directly responsible
for the
vogue this term eventually had in the 1950's and 60's. That vogue stemmed from
a book entitled The New Class by the Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas.

In his memoir Life in Dark Ages,Ernst
Pawel mourned ``the loss of an entire generation of potential [Yugoslavian]
leaders'' during WWII. Writing around 1993, as
Yugoslavia was breaking up and Bosnians were being used for target practice, he
speculated that this loss ``contributed much more decisively to the current
crisis than those hoary `primitive tribal hatreds' reflexively invoked by
pompous pundits simulating omniscience.'' (Despite this mocking stance, Pawel
makes clear throughout the book that primitive tribal hatreds were very real
and could readily become violent.) He continues:

Perhaps the most representative figure of this truly lost
generation is Milovan Djilas, now at eighty-two an unhappy and powerless but
still keen observer of the political scene. Born in Montenegro--his ``land
without Justice''--in 1911 and already a dedicated Communist in high school, he
came to Belgrade in 1929, enrolled in the liberal arts faculty of the
university and soon gained the reputation of a charismatic firebrand. In 1933
he was arrested, brutally tortured and sentenced to three years in the Sremska
Mitrovitsa penitentiary, which at the time already hosted the elite of the
Communist party. On his release he was elected to the party's clandestine
Central Committee and became its most notoriously doctrinaire member, the
Saint-Just of the proletarian revolution. During the years of Partisan warfare
he was Tito's chief lieutenant; after the victory he became Tito's vice
president and most likely successor, indisputably the second most powerful man
in postwar Yugoslavia.

(Some paragraphs following this seem to be poorly researched or at best
interpretively phrased, so I'll free-hand from here.) In the early
1950's, after the break between Tito and Stalin, Djilas started publishing
articles demanding reform of the party and the government. This was especially
easy for him to do because propaganda was part of his portfolio. Generally
speaking, this is called ``giving a man enough rope to hang himself.'' He
created a journal called Nova Misao (`New Thought'), in which his own
articles were increasingly unorthodox. His criticisms, particularly in a
series of articles for the journal Borba from October 1953 to January
1954, led that January to his expulsion from the government and removal from
all party positions. He later resigned from the party, though he always
continued to regard himself as a communist. He also got a chance to experience
how Sremska Mitrovitsa was operated under the new regime.

I should probably say a bit more here about the ideas of Djilas on The New
Class, but given the odds against your having read down to this point, I'll
just stop abruptly.

New Criticism

A movement or tendency in literary criticism, dominant beginning in the
1930's. (Doesn't sound so ``New'' anymore, eh?) The movement is rather
loosely defined -- so loosely, in fact, that there are essentially two loose
definitions: broadly loosely defined, and narrowly loosely defined, or vice
versa. (It's a good thing you came here for an explanation, because no
self-respecting reference work would dare to confuse you with the truth.)

Narrowly defined, the New Criticism was a movement in American literary
criticism, dominant in the 1930's and 40's. The core group of New Critics
labored in the American hinterlands, influenced by T.S. Eliot,
I.A. Richards, William Empson and others on
the East Coast and in England. (Don't ask ``what others?'' -- I'm typing just
as fast as I'm finding out.) Broadly defined, the New Criticism was a movement
in Anglophone literary criticism that included many of the
``influences'' on the narrow group, and was dominant from the 1930's to the
1960's. I'm focusing first on the narrowly defined group because that's how I
happened to start out.

The movement got its name from the title (The New Criticism) that John
Crowe Ransom used for a major essay on poetry, published in the journal New
Directions in 1941. It seems everything was New.

Ransom's title reveals a reliable feature of New Critics: they focused their
studies narrowly on poetry. It could be hard to tell whether they viewed
poetry simply as paradigmatic, or simply forgot other forms of art literature
altogether. This prejudice was not unique to the New Critics, but common to
many of the critical approaches to literature that arose around that time in
Anglophone academe. Richards's
Practical Criticism is a
parallel example: only a few sentences into the preface does IAR indicate, in
passing, that the literature whose criticism is discussed in the book is all
poetry. (By the 1960's, the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme. As
the celebrated charlatan Jacques Derrida would write in De la
grammatologie in 1967, ``Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.'' This is
typically translated `There is nothing outside the text. N'ya-n'ya.' By
implication, everything is a text, and equally worthy of being misunderstood
by academic critics. On the other side, we should note that Derrida's
rhetorical stance amounted to the claim that there was nothing inside the text
either, since it could be twisted to mean anything and hence nothing.
Incidentally, ``de la grammatologie,'' can be translated `all about
grandmother.' Also, when I say that Jacques wrote this in ``De la
grammatologie,'' I don't mean as a marginal comment or graffito or
anything: I mean it was part of the text -- it had to be, after all. Page 227,
to be precise.)

In case you were wondering, they're listed in diminishing order of how long
they lived. Looks like lit professor ain't a bad gig.

(Working, working. Don't complain that the content is incomplete. The content
is always incomplete. Rejoice -- yes, I think rejoice is the opposite
of intransitive complain -- that I'm rushing out all this content before
it's all polished and shit, and at the risk of great personal embarrassment,
just so you can have another source to plagiarize your term paper from.)

US: A group of moderate Democrats formed in 1996. Less
conservative than the blue dogs.
As of May 2005, the New Democrat Coalition in the US House of
Representatives, chaired by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Calif.), had 42
members.

NeWS

Network-Extensible Window System. A PostScript-based window system
from Sun.

Pronounced by some with two syllables (e.g., neewis) to distinguish it
from Usenet news[groups].

news

The meaning of this word is no news to you. I just want to point out that
the word new has been used as a noun since
at least the time of King Alfred. The use of the plural in the sense of
novelties, and later in the current common sense of reports of events,
arose in the 13th or 14th century, apparently under the influence of the
parallel Middle French nouvelles or perhaps the Latin nova.News and words with similar meaning and construction are very natural
developments from adjectives like new, and similar developments have
occurred independently in Dutch and Arabic.

At the time that the word news arose in English, most people were
illiterate and acronyms were rare. The story about the word news being
an acronym of ``North East West South'' is untenable, a coincidence that works
only in English, and in fact silly.

Here is a short, somewhat idiosyncratic list of online news organizations or
sources:

It's funny how certain ideas seem to be in the air at some times, for no
evident reason. Then again it might be coincidence. In January 2006, the
death of the newspaper was again on the collective editorial mind. That
month's issue of Commentary had a
piece by Joseph Epstein entitled ``Are Newspapers Doomed?'' (He doesn't quite
answer the title question explicitly, but he seems to think the answer is yes.)

On January 7, Michael Kinsley had a light-heartedly pessimistic
``Op-Ed'' column on the same topic in the
Washington Post. (Op-Ed in scare quotes
because I don't consider a column an Op-Ed if it's by someone on the editorial
staff of the newspaper whose ``Op-Ed'' page it appears on.)

Here's an example of probably nonlinear
extrapolation from that article:

The trouble even an established customer will take to obtain a newspaper
continues to shrink, as well. Once, I would drive across town if necessary.
Today, I open the front door and if the paper isn't within about 10 feet I
retreat to my computer and read it online. Only six months ago, that figure
was 20 feet. Extrapolating, they will have to bring it to me in bed by the end
of the year and read it to me out loud by the second quarter of 2007.

new tenure

Term for post-tenure review (PTR, q.v.),
to distinguish it from ``continuing tenure,'' the good old days.

New Wave economist

An economist (i.e., an entrail reader who specializes in economic
sooth-saying) who believes that ``we have finally managed to tame the business
cycle, and [that] big booms followed by equally big busts are history'' in
pretty much those words. New Wave economists refer to the bad old days before
the taming of the economic cycle as the Old Wave world. Edward Yardeni, a New
Wave economist, coined the wave terminology back in the late 1980's, before the
economic slow-down that began in 1988 or 1989. During the 1990's, the number
of New Wavers (or whatever they came to be called) grew steadily. It's bound
to grow again dramatically once the 2002 or 2003 recovery gets some traction.

The previous group of economists who believed that the business cycle could be
tamed (but believed this for the wrong reasons, as we now all realize) were the
Keynesians (the followers of John Maynard Keynes). Keynesians believed that
the economy could be fine-tuned by fiscal policy -- deficit-based government
spending to increase in bad times and decrease in good times. Okay, in very
good times. In very, very good times. Eventually, anyway. When Nixon announced that he was a Keynesian, you
had to know the jig was up. Today we believe in monetary policy.

In Euroland, they believe in everything --
fiscal policy, monetary policy, and fairies. When the French and German
economies stall, the French and German governments rack up big deficits
(fiscal policy). They don't play games with the currency, because that's
controlled by the European Central Bank (ECB) in
order to assure stable growth (monetary policy). Before they could join the
the euro, countries had to demonstrate the fiscal discipline that would allow a
common currency to work, by meeting certain ``convergence criteria.'' In order
to make sure that countries continued to exercise fiscal discipline after they
joined, penalties are imposed on a country that fails to keep its budget
deficit in check (fairies).

New Year

I almost admire people my own age (early
geezerhood) who can manage to
get excited about this ``event.''

New Year's resolutions

The trouble with New Year's resolutions is that people too often choose
only unattainable goals. It's important to include some more modest
resolutions, resolve to do things you were going to do anyway, or not start
doing things that you weren't going to do. These are confidence-builders.
They make it possible to say that you kept at least some of your
resolutions. For example, in 2003 I plan not to smoke in the shower, and to lose weight overnight, every night. Also: no
shelling hazelnuts with a fish-scaling knife. (Not that anybody would be fool
enough to try that. On second thought, see 419.)
Also: always have plenty of band-aids in the bathroom cabinet.

Okay, now: let's build on these successes with a more challenging resolution.
When I'm striding at a healthy but unhurried pace toward a door ten yards away,
and some jerk decides to hold it open for me, I will not rush
appreciatively to minimize the time he or she stands there holding it.
Instead, I will immediately slow down and grab my hip, and start limping in
obvious pain. They want to do a good turn, let 'em put in the hard time. Give
'em value-for-money: do the whole steppinfetchit routine. (And if they grab my
elbow to help me along, I'll whack'em with my pocketbook. Must remember to
pre-deploy brick.)

Stepin Fetchit used to say about his stage act (not his demeaning turns in the movies) that just
getting to center stage was half the act.

Also, if you do decide to resolve to lose weight in the new year, resolve big.
Failing to lose five pounds is embarrassing. For the same amount of effort,
you can fail to lose fifty pounds, which is heroic.

Somewhere in the glossary I have a list of good ideas. When I find it, I'll
place a link to it from here. Until I do, I'll mention here that it's a bad
idea to go shopping in a supermarket (Meijers) or hardware store (Menards)
wearing a red polo shirt, unless you want to have lots of short conversations
with strangers.

In early 2006, there seems to be a greater number than usual of stories in the
media about people crowding the gyms on account of their resolutions to get in
shape. Some of it is seasonal: Men's Fitness magazine has a smattering
of articles on things like adjusting your routine to deal with January
crowding, and on designing a home gym, since this is the month you're likeliest
to decide to do it. Both stories are in the February 2006 issue (``display
until January 31'') also eventually mentioned at the mirrors entry.

The Observer, student newspaper for Notre Dame
and Saint Mary's, had a front-page article on January 19 entitled ``Campus
gyms see new year influx,'' with slugline ``Motivated exercisers flock to the
Rock, Rolfs at spring semester's outset.'' The Rock (nickname for the Rockne
Memorial Building, named for legendary chemistry
professor Knute Rockne) and Rolfs Sports Recreation Center (named after a
donor, I think) are said to be experiencing a flood of ``resolution-makers
and fitness faithful.'' (It's a Catholic school, but the Church gave
evolutionary theory a general nihil obstat in the 1950's or 60's). The
director of RecSports reports that the first 6 to 8 weeks of the Spring
semester are the busiest time of the year.

NEXAFS

Near-Edge X-ray Absorption Fine Structure. A spectroscopy used to
determine the orientation of molecular adsorbates on single-crystal surfaces.

NexGen

NEXt GENeration. A reasonable adjective but a bad name, because on
deployment, it becomes the CurGen. Cf.A (for
Advanced).

NexGen

From ``NEXt GENeration.'' A maker of
Intel clones until January 16, 1996, when it was absorbed by AMD in a stock swap. NexGen had been the first out
with a Pentium clone, but they spent 1995 in red ink.

NexGen was supposed to continue as a wholly-owned subsidiary, but I don't know
what kind of distinct existence it maintained. What would have been their
Nx686 was marketed as the AMD-K6, next generation in AMD's Superscalar uP
series. As it happens, at midyear 1997, AMD reported that it would not be able
to meet K6 production targets, not long after engineers had told stock analysts
that ``yields had been all that they had hoped for'' (as reported in
the 8 Sept. 1997
issue of Semiconductor Business News).
Studying the Delphic oracles would have taught the ``analysts'' how to
interpret such an ambiguous report.

I'm not sure if it's the same company, but a NexGen with the same URL is now
(2004) in the consumer electronics retail business and also offers related
services.

NexGen MWS

NEXt GENeration Missile Warning System.
According to a pre-award solicitation notice released May 23, 2004,
NexGen AWS is a joint project between the Directional Infrared Countermeasures
(DIRCM) joint program office managed by Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and
the Air Force's Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM) program
office (US government agencies).

This interesting page
from the US National Weather Service gives a contemptibly foolish explanation
of Doppler radar, if you realize that the word ``phase'' is not a synonym of
``frequency.'' (I.e., if you remember high-school physics.) [It
is possible to measure the phase shift of a scattering wave, if there
is no frequency shift. That is essentially what a hologram does.]

Newfoundland and Labrador is not (and was not) one of the ``Maritime
Provinces.'' Not even two of the ``Maritime Provinces.'' You have
three guesses left. (Warning! Spoiler information at the entries for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward
Island.)

The provincial capital is St. John's. Let's petitition some government to make
St. John's's the official possessive form of St. John's. I have
no position on whether St. John's should be alphabetized among the SA's or the
ST's. On
May 29, 2002, the Board of Regents of Memorial University of Newfoundland,
in St. John's, recommended to the provincial government that the name of the university be shortened to Memorial
University, but as of 2004 I haven't noticed any change in usage. Newfoundland
and Labrador and Quebec are Canada's two easternmost
provinces. Don't people think these things through in advance?

NonFiction. On May 7, 2000, I checked out the USA Today best-seller
lists based on a sales survey (this is immunized against volume orders).
Of the top sellers (hardback and paper together), 19 of the top 50, 18 of
the next 50, and 19 of the following 50 (i.e., ranked 101-150) were nonfiction.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 38% of book sales by volume are nonfiction.

Barnes and Noble, which used to discount books
on the New York Times best-seller lists, now makes
up its own best-seller lists as well, and also mixes fiction and nonfiction.
Does this trend away from a fiction-nonfiction distinction signal the
approaching collapse of the commitment to truth and civilization, or does it
herald the dawn of a more nuanced and mature understanding of
the radical ambiguity of language?

.nf

(Domain name code for) Norfolk Island.

NFA

National Forensic Association
. Sponsors of the oldest national (US) open individual events tournament
for colleges and universities. Their championship tournament is held each
spring.'' Affiliated with the AFA. There are other debating entries in this glossary.

You know, abstracting can be done well or badly. Chemical Abstracts is done
much better than Physics Abstracts, and they are correspondingly much more
heavily used (and more expensive). This isn't just my opinion, you know, this
is my professional second opinion. Of course, the situations are not simply
comparable. It is rather harder to organize physics abstracts than chemistry
abstracts, because chemistry papers can always ultimately be categorized by the
substances they study, and there is no comparable principle for physics
papers. Also, there are many more chemists and chemical engineers than there
are physicists.

NFB

National Federation for the Blind.
``Founded in 1940,'' it ``is the
[US's] largest and most influential membership organization of blind
persons. With fifty thousand members, the NFB has affiliates in all fifty
states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, and over seven hundred local
chapters. As a consumer and advocacy organization, the NFB is considered the
leading force in the blindness field today.''

National Football Foundation. A US organization that runs the College
Football Hall of Fame. For many years the Hall was located in downtown South
Bend, Indiana, a couple of miles southwest of the University of Notre Dame. I
recall reading news reports from time to time that the Hall wasn't doing very
well financially, and was considering gracing some other city. Late on
Tuesday, September 22, 2009, reliable reports surfaced (since confirmed) that
the Hall would move to Atlanta. You've heard of Atlanta? They have a great
college football tradition? Oh well, Cooperstown never had a great baseball
tradition, apart from its HoF.

The College Football Hall of Famewill be moved from South Bend to a site across
from Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta,
on a piece of land to be donated
by the Cathy family, founders of Atlanta-based Chic-fil-A.

NFF

No Failures Found. Designation of components returned from the field
and reported defective, which subsequently appeared to operate correctly
in the laboratory. Generally synonymous with CND,
NDF, NTF.

NFFNSNC

A gravestone witticism so popular that it was even given in abbreviation:
Non Fui Fui Non Sum Non Curo. Latin for `I
did not exist; I existed; I do not exist; I don't care.' Learn more from
Lattimore: Themes in Greek and Latin
Epitaphs, p. 85.

National Football League.
(There's also an ESPN site.)
Governing body of US football; formed from
the merger of the NFC and the upstart competitor
AFC. As the individual teams in different
``leagues'' of professional baseball now do, the individual football teams play
regular-season games against teams both in and out of their own conference.
There is a playoff system with separate playoffs for AFC and NFC, and a final
round called the Super Bowl, designated by roman numerals and celebrated
with virgin sacrifices, between the AFC and NFC champions. After two weeks
of intense hype, the game is usually an anticlimax won by the NFC.

Jersey number ranges in the NFL:

1-19:

Quarterbacks, kickers, and punters.

20-49:

Running backs and defensive backs.

50-59:

Linebackers.

60-79:

Linemen.

80-89:

Receivers and tight ends.

90-99:

Linebackers and defensive linemen.

The rules are bent as necessary, if the numbers in some category are exhausted.

In 1991, Cecil Adams answered a question regarding evolution in man. Here is
some of the answer (the full answer is at The
Straight Dope):

As for whether our genes are accurately reproduced, you silly goose, the genes
always accurately reproduce. Except sometimes. On the latter occasions one of
several things results: one, monsters-- that is, grossly malformed babies
resulting from a genetic mistake. Years ago most monsters died, but now many
can be saved. This has made possible the National Football League. ...

NFLC

(US) National Foreign Language Center. At Johns Hopkins University.

Nfld.

NewFoundLanD. An abbreviation what people used before The Great
Punctuation Shortage CfNF

National Football League Referees Association.
The referees' union. At the time of the lock-out of 2012, there were 121 of
them, but the contract (that as of this writing appears likely to be) approved
to end that mess includes provisions for an unspecified number (but say 20) of
additional zebras ``for training and development purposes.''

Teller, of the famous Penn and
Teller comedic magic act, was born Raymond Joseph Teller (on
St. Valentine's Day 1948). He legally changed his name to Teller. On his
driver's licence, NFN appears in the space for his first name.

NFO

Near-Field Optics. The ``International Conference on Near Field Optics,
Nanophotonics and Related Techniques'' is also abbreviated NFO.

Network File System. A scheme to share files in storage media
physically controlled by one machine (the NFS server) among different
machines. Originally designed by Sun
for use in
LAN's. Scheme is perhaps overtaxed as presently
used. Maybe AFS is better. Maybe we just need
100× our current bandwidth.

Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority. Buses in
Buffalo and Niagara Falls, NY. Light rail
from downtown to the Main Street campus of UB.
Operates Buffalo International Airport, which is thoughtfully situated
just on the northern edge of the snow belt.

There are three common nasal consonants represented by individual
characters in the IPA. The two that are obvious to
an English-speaker are en and em, represented /n/ and /m/ (or by [n] and [m],
if you're into that sort of distinction). The third is the ng sound. If you
really need to have this sound explained, then I probably can't help you. I
will point out that the articulation of ng is similar to that of n, but with
the back of the tongue raised against the back of the palate, instead of the
tip of the tongue against the front.

In the IPA the ng sound is represented by a non-ASCII symbol that looks like a
lower-case n, but with the second stroke extended below the line like the
descender of a letter j. On the other hand, most languages that have the sound
and which use an alphabet script avoid using a separate symbol for it. The
earliest instance of this situation is probably Greek. In Greek, two
successive gammas (not a digamma!) represent the ng sound. Thus for
example, our word angel comes from the Greek word spelled
ággelos (`messenger'). The Greeks further recognized that the
nasal consonant preceding kappa (unvoiced version of gamma) and chi (aspirated
version of kappa) was also sometimes an ng, and represented these by an
extention of the double-gamma representation: gamma-kappa represented the
consonant pair that occurs in most native English-speakers pronunciation of
think, and gamma-chi the nasal sound in a typical reporter's
pronunciation of ``Nkomo,'' perhaps. A more native example of the gamma-chi
sound which works for some Anglophones is income, since most speakers
aspirate the c, but for some the n is just /n/. (And in case you're wondering,
Greek didn't have an aspirated gamma sound. I should also note that the chi
pronunciation I refer to is the Classical Greek. On the Italian peninsula,
the chi was eventually pronounced /ks/, and became our letter ex.)

[Note that throughout this entry, by ``g sound'' I mean what is usually called
a ``hard gee'' (not a ``soft'' or ``sweet gee''); in other words, the consonant
in the word go.]
An ng sound arises naturally from a kind of slurring-together of n with g or k:
Since g and k stop consonants are articulated at the back of the mouth, it is
less effort to pronounce an ng than an n before the stop. The income
example above is an example of this, though English spelling doesn't show it.
That is,
in + come --> income represents an instance of
n + k --> (ng)k. Greek spelling makes this change more visible.
For example, the name pancreas was constructed from Greek pan +
kréas, `all flesh.' The many compounds that include a pan
prefix usually use a Greek letter nu, but pancreas is written
págkreas.

The Greek practice of writing gamma-kappa for what we represent by ``nk'' works
so long as there are no words that actually have a g-k consonant cluster (like
rug-cutter). If there were such words, they were probably rare.

It goes without saying that English spelling does not have a general rule for
indicating the n/ng distinction. As usual some general patterns hold
imperfectly. In particular, a final nk or ng is fairly certain to imply
the presence of an ng. Also, when the letter en precedes a k or g sound
(uncle, anger, ankle, banquet, anxious,
etc.), it usually indicates an ng, although dialects differ, and not entirely
systematically. It is important to observe, however, that ``ng'' may or may
not indicate the presence of the stop consonant. For example, ringer
and ringlet have no g sound, but Ringo, ingot, and
English do. (The difference is noticeable in the German word
English, which has no g sound.)

(As a sidelight on the Greek double-gamma practice: in the Korean Hangul
script, two g's together represent a harder gee sound, something conceived as
lying between /g/ and /k/, even though that is really a voicing difference.)

.ng

(Domain name code for) Nigeria. The oil dictatorship and
former British colony. Not to be confused with landlocked Niger (.ne).

New Graduate College. New wing of the Graduate College, the residential
college (local name for a dorm) at
Princeton University. There's a semi-abstract statue of a reclining
fertility goddess up by the 3000 entries, done
in tea-kettle black-enamel on cast iron. When someone put a bra on it, it
suddenly looked quite obscene. Elsewhere there's a structure of the sort that
Buckminster Fuller called a tensegrity -- a structure held together
"by tension forces only." More precisely, it's a structure composed
of tubes that do not contact each other, but held rigid by wires ("you
can't push a rope," the saying goes). The one at the NGC is made of
nearly stainless steel.

National Greek Exam.
(Classical Greek -- mostly Homeric and Attic; see
Greek entry for clarification.) Sponsored by the American Classical
League (ACL) and the Junior Classical League
(JCL). Primarily for high school students in the
US and Canada. Not a requirement for admission
to anyplace I've heard of, just an academic competition. There are other exams
sponsored by the same organizations, in Latin (NLE)
and mythology.

NGfL

(UK) National Grid For Learning. A ``... portal
[that] brings together a vast and growing collection of sites that support
education and lifelong learning.'' It's in the gov.uk subdomain, so it's
government-sponsored. What does that mean anymore? Here it means that the
vast and growing is selected preferentially from the .uk domain.

NGI

Next Generation Internet. Wait up! Wait for me! I'm almost caught up to
the Previous Generation Internet!

NGN

Next Generation Network.

NGO

Non-Governmental Organization. A civic or public advocacy organization.

Refers to any of the charitable and not-so-charitable organizations which
volunteer their real or imagined expertise to the public and the public's
governments. It also refers to organizations, some of them the same, which
generate, transfer, or administer humanitarian and other aid. E.g.:
Greenpeace, The Tobacco Council, NOW, ... NGO's
are a twentieth-century realization of the Platonic ideal of government
proposed in his Republic. Their variety and disagreements raise an
issue not much considered by Plato: in the day of the philosopher-kings, which shall
be the king's philosophy? The scientific take on this question -- the way
science keeps itself honest and on-track -- is: ``how will you measure it''?
The sociological terminology is: ``how do you
operationalize it''? The political form is: ``who counts the votes''? Luis
Alvarez once said:

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy
has as much right to an opinion as Fermi.

The term NGO also refers to organizations, some of them the same, which
generate, transfer, or administer humanitarian and other aid, such as
MSF and ICRC.

(Japanese) National Grassland Research
Institute. I was surprised to learn Japan had grassland. Oh, no wait:
a usually reliable source says it doesn't, and NGRI's mission is to
figure out how to get Japan some grassland. Hmmm, this is sounding
ominous. And everyone was wondering why that dynamic new prime minister is
putting so much political capital into removing the constitutional restrictions
on Japan's military...

NGSS, NGS2

Narrow Gap Semiconductors and Systems. It ``is the main conference in the
field of Narrow Gap Semiconductors including low dimensional carbon systems
such as carbon nano-tube and graphene. It is held every two years with around
150 attendees.''

NGU

Non-Gonococcal Urethritis. Inflammation of the urethra not caused by
gonorrhea infection. Term often refers to urethritis similar to that
caused by gonorrhea but caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and occurring
as a common early symptom of chlamydia among males.

Ngultrum

The monetary unit of Bhutan, introduced in 1974 and pegged since then to be
equal in value to one Indian rupee. In other words, it's worth about two cents
of an EU euro or a US dollar, but it's worth 11 points in
Scrabble® (all three major
dictionaries).

One one-hundredth of a kwacha (ZMK), the official currency of
Zambia. As of early 2006, 1 ZMK is itself worth less
than one thirtieth of a US penny, but the ngwee has held steady at a value of 9
Scrabble® points (it's in all
three major dictionaries). Ngwee is also the plural form. Or perhaps the
singular has never been observed.

National Humanities
Alliance. ``...was created to unify public interest in support of
federal programs in the humanities. The Alliance is the only organization
that represents the humanities as a whole -- scholarly and professional
associations; organizations of museums, libraries, historical societies,
higher education, and state humanities councils; university and independent
centers for scholarship and other organizations concerned with national
humanities policies. The Alliance is strictly nonpartisan.

The NHA homepage was first webpage that I noticed had an extra
&nbsp; at the end of each sentence to assure proper spacing!

Cf. Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA),
corresponding advocacy organization for social whutzits.

NHANES

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

NHB

Necesidades Humanas Básicas.
Spanish, `basic human needs.' This would be a
great initialism for texting. It's already used in academic economic
literature.

National Hurricane Center / Tropical Prediction Center. Seems to be the
same as the NHC.

NHD

National History Day.
National History Day is not a national history day. It's not even a
today-in-US-history site. It's usually a bad sign when an organization chooses
a misleading name and then offers to enlighten you. It's the intellectual
equivalent of a protection racket (but see the Ulam quote at the abacus entry).

``National History Day is not just one day, but a yearlong education program
that makes history come alive through educator professional development and
active student learning.'' NHD is an educrat's idea of a useful site. Its
main feature is that you get to see a lot of webpages that are refreshingly
free of unfamiliar information before you have to face any page containing
historical stuff. Its principal sponsor is The WWII
Channel.

National here means, or certainly at least
originally meant, Canadian. In fact,
although a majority of the teams play in the US, a majority of the players are
still Canadian, despite the influx of Russians.

One little-appreciated unfortunate consequence of hockey is Tim Hortons coffee.
There's no justice: a lockout by the owners cancelled the entire 2004-5 season,
but Tim Hortons coffee poured on. (Tim Horton was a hockey player. There was
only one of him and his last name was spelled without an ess.)

Amazingly, the most successful hockey players move efficiently and spend much
of their time not attacking other players. Fortunately, these facts
have not been widely noted. Hockey is regularly touted as a down-to-earth
sport played by regular blue-collar sorts of guys. (Senator John Kerry did
inestimable damage -- I can't estimate it, can you? -- to the sport's
reputation during the 2004 presidential primary campaign in New Hampshire, when
he put on skates and a Bruins jersey and played a scratch game with some
firemen.) I think that ``regular guys'' are people who go to the race track in
hopes of seeing a gruesome accident. On the other hand, my friend Paul ate
with the Canucks one day because they were staying at the same Toronto hotel as
he was. But that was back when the average NHL player earned under a million
dollars. (In 2003, the average NHL player earned 1.79 million USD.)

NHL

Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The other general class of lymphoma is simply
called Hodgkin's disease.

(US) National Highway System. Evidently, system does not imply
systematic. The different expansions assigned to NHS in the US and in the UK seem to reflect a difference in national
priorities.

NHS

National Honor Society.
``The National Honor Society (NHS) and National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) are the nation's premier organizations
established to recognize outstanding high school and middle level students.
More than just an honor roll, NHS and NJHS serve to honor those students who
have demonstrated excellence in the areas of Scholarship, Leadership, Service,
and Character (and Citizenship for NJHS). These characteristics have been
associated with membership in the organization since their beginnings in 1921
and 1929.''
``... NHS and NJHS chapters are found in all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, many U.S. Territories, and Canada.''

(US) National High School Association.
``[A]n inclusive organization committed to facilitating improvement in student
learning and educational practices. Our purpose is to provide opportunities
for professional growth and dialogue among high school educators and other
advocates of quality education.''

Name in Modern Greek and some other languages
(e.g. Serbian and Croatian) of the Greek letter nu
().
Pronounced like that word that cannot be heard, pronounced by the garden-loving
knights of Monty Python. (In case you're some kind of cultural illiterate,
that means it's pronounced like English knee.)

A good rule of thumb, if you're trying to guess the modern pronunciation
of an ancient Greek word, is to change all the
vowels to a long ee (/i:/ in IPA). This is called
ioticism.

Nickel has an interesting rôle in the formation of contacts to
GaAs. A eutectic alloy of gold and germanium
(at a surprisingly low 12% Ge) can make a good contact at a point, but
it tends to bead on the GaAs surface. In practice, one makes a
Gold-Germanium-Nickel contact: starting from the semiconductor surface,
one deposits a layer of germanium (say a micron), a layer of gold of
about equal thickness, and a layer of Nickel. When the temperature is
raised above the melting point of the AuGe eutectic, gold and germanium
mix, by forming a melt beginning at their common interface. The liquid AuGe
mix, however, does not bead, presumably because it wets the Ni surface.
The small concentration of nickel dissolved into the gold-germnanium melt
apparently also improves the ohmic contact.

The oldest ancient iron artifacts found in Egypt have high nickel content,
apparently because they were made from meteorites found on the ground, rather
than from mined iron ore.

NI

Postal code for Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen in German), one
of the sixteen states (Länder) of the German Federal Republic (FRG). [Like most of the country information in this
glossary, Germany's is at the domain code .de.]

Lower Saxony is the second-largest state, with an area of 47,611 sq. km.
Its population was 7,162,000 by the census of 1987, estimated at 7,845,398 for
Dec. 31, 1997. Okay, what time on Dec. 31? You know, a couple of
hundred people are born and die in that state every day. The very best census
data are considered to be accurate at no better than the 1% level. Seven
pretended digits of accuracy are purely otiose.

The West German state of Lower Saxony was stitched together in 1946 from a
bunch of older states. The capital is Hanover, which is spelled
Hannover in German.

Northern Indiana Association of Psychology. They've got a shingle on
US 33/Bus. 31/S.R. 933, northbound from South Bend, a couple of miles from
Michigan.

NIB

National Industries for the Blind. ``Our
mission at National Industries for the Blind is to enhance the opportunities
for economic and personal independence of people who are blind primarily
through creating, sustaining and improving employment.''

NIB

The New Interpreter's Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes. In
this new edition of an old, somewhat apologetic standard reference, each volume
covers at least two Bible books. Cf.IB.

NIBMAR

No Independence Before MAjority Rule. Also No Independence Before
Majority African Rule. The expansion without ``African'' is probably
preferable, since the minority being distinguished from the African majority
was white and European in origin, but insisted on its African identity.

The European colonial powers granted or conceded independence to their African
colonies starting in the 1950's and accelerating in the 1960's. The process
was largely complete when Portugal granted independence to Angola and
Mozambique in 1975 and 1976. South Africa was somewhat exceptional. Initially
settled by the Dutch, it finally came completely under British control in 1910.
Very quickly, and in significant measure due to the efforts of Jan Christiaan
Smuts, a Liberal government in Britain soon granted a high degree of local
self-government to South Africa in 1910. At the time, it was
mostly taken for granted by whites -- i.e., by the British and by white
settlers -- that South Africa would be governed by whites. South Africa would
consist of a black African colony (or colonies) within the territory of an
independent European-style nation. Not everyone agreed; the African National
Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912.

Despite majority opposition, the minority-rule arrangement must have looked
like it had long-term stability. Majority rule did not come to South Africa
until the 1990's. Many whites in neighboring Southern Rhodesia (the country
now known as Zimbabwe) wanted a similar deal. It wasn't unreasonable for them
to suppose they could tough it out indefinitely. They probably saw the US and
Canada as proofs of principle that a European presence and eventually -- with
the help of immigration -- a European majority could be established over a
large territory originally controlled by a non-European majority. (In Latin
America to this day, European elites govern some countries with autochthon
majorities.) One could also imagine a smooth transition to majority rule in
the distant future. The white minority in Southern Rhodesia had a virtual
monopoly on modern weaponry, and a history of putting down insurgencies since
the 1890's.

Southern Rhodesia had been taken over by stages into the British Empire,
starting with agreements that Cecil Rhodes made with local chiefs in the late
1880's to allow mining. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia were
combined with Nyasaland (now Malawi) in a Federation
of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Under pressure for majority rule in Northern
Rhodesia, the federation was dissolved at the end of 1963, and Northern
Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia on October 24,
1964. (After that time, Southern Rhodesia was simply called Rhodesia.)
Following the dissolution of the federation, and as the UK moved to grant
independence to Northern Rhodesia, the white minority administration in
Southern Rhodesia also sought independence under its existing arrangements.
This was opposed by the British government, which was formally committed to a
policy of NIBMAR.

NIBMAR had been promoted by African, Asian, and Caribbean members of the
British Commonwealth for years before the Rhodesias split up. British
PM Harold Wilson resisted. Eventually, at the
July 21, 1961, Commonwealth conference in London, he accepted a draft
resolution formulated by Canadian PM Lester Pearson. Nevertheless, he
continued to offer Ian Smith, leader of Southern Rhodesia, deals that fell far
short of NIBMAR. They were not enough for Smith, at least in the 1960's, and
on November 11, 1965, his administration unilaterally declared independence
(see UDI).

NIBW

National Independent Bookstore Week. Is that like a memorial day?

nibble

Either an alternate spelling for nybble, or
what to do to savor a snibble.

niblick

The name for a golf club from back in the days of wooden shafts, before the
clubs became standardized and numbered. It is ``like'' a 9-iron in the
sense that it has a loft angle comparable to that of a 9-iron. That is, the
face of the club is about 40 degrees away from the vertical. (More precisely,
that's the angle of the shaft relative to the plane of the face of the club at
the point where it contacts the ball.) In the early 1960's, 9-irons had loft
angles in the low 40's. However, modern clubs are ``standardized'' primarily
in the sense that they are mass produced. Nothing prevented club manufacturers
from collectively reshaping the clubs over time, and by the beginning of the
twenty-first century, the loft angles of 9-irons were typically in the upper
40's.

Even taking a 9-iron with the same loft angle as a basis of comparison, the
clubs differ in other ways: they have different blade shape and face curvature,
and the lie angle of the niblick is smaller because it was intended to be hit
with a squat, side-winding swing rather than a modern upright swing. See our
ye olde golfe clubbies entry for
little more.

Network Interface Card. An internal card for a computer slot, which
handles communication between a personal computer and a high-speed net
(ethernet, cable modem, or DSL). Also known as a
DNI.

NIC

Newly Industrializing Country. Playing catch-up.

NICA

National Institute of Circus Arts.
A ``national arts training institute that offers Australia's only Bachelor of
Circus Arts. The course is accredited by Swinburne University of Technology and
the institute is located at its Prahran campus. The course attracts applicants
from across Australia and the world and entry into the first year is highly
competitive.''

NICAP

National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. A UFO research organization. Founded in 1957, headed
by Maj. Donald
Edward Keyhoe USMC (1897-1988), influential in the 1960's.

A city on France'sCôte d'Azur.
Specifically, it is on la Baie des Anges, less than ten miles west of
Monaco. The street running along the beach has the names Promenade des
Anglais and Quai des États-Unis. Awww, how... sweet.

National (U.K.) Institute of Co-ordinated
Experiments. The bad guys'
organization in That Hideous Strength (1945), the final volume
of C.S. Lewis's ``Cosmic Trilogy.'' From the
P.O.V. of Lewis, N.I.C.E. might be regarded as an ironic name, since N.I.C.E.
is actually evil. Lewis likes to play around a lot with the significance of
names. However, I think the case of N.I.C.E. mostly just counts as false
advertising.

There doesn't seem to be an official overall title of the series or
trilogy or whatever. Unofficially, both
``Cosmic Trilogy'' and ``Space Trilogy'' have been used. The first and second
books take place mostly on fictional stand-ins for Mars (``Malacandra'') and
Venus (``Perelandra''), respectively. The third takes up as much shelf space
as the first two combined and takes place mostly on the Earth (``Thulcundra,''
the ``Silent Planet'').

The first two novels [entitled Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and
Perelandra (1943)], have as their principal bad guy a Dr. Weston. He's
a renowned physicist. Ransom kills Weston in
Perelandra. (Alright: technically he kills Weston's body, which
Weston's moral weakness has allowed to be taken over by the Un-Man. So the
killing would be okay even if it weren't already okay because Ransom kills in
self-defense.) Dr. Elwin Ransom is the hero of all three novels and a
professor of philology. In the third book he is called Fisher King.

You know, C.S. Lewis novels come out pretty badly in a comparison with the
Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo. At least the Catholic Church made a
distinction between what it thought were Galileo's motivations and the effects
of his ``errors.'' Lewis makes his star scientist a kidnapper and murderer to
begin with, and he goes morally downhill from there.

Nick

Nickname for Nicholas and slang for the devil. If conflation of the devil
and Saint Nicholas amuses you, visit this
other entry.

You've probably seen this phrase for years as part of the captions that
line your escape route (``check-out aisle'') from the supermarket. The story
was basically that they were together apart or apart together, or in transit
between these conditions. They're celebrities. Neither has completely
discarded his or her surname: they're Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. I think
that the surname Simpson originally meant ``son of a simpleton,'' but I
don't know a good mnemonic for Lachey.

As celebrities, by definition they're mostly famous for being famous, but they
had to become famous (i.e., boot-strap the process) by doing something
else first. Jessica's something else was being a ``singer,'' which nowadays
means something like ``cute dancing lip-syncher.'' Nick is also a ``singer,''
but I think he became a celebrity through his connection with Jessica. CD's
are issued with their names, and possibly they even perform. Somebody seems to
buy the CD's, though I'm not sure if this is listening music. It might be more
like those recognition gifts that you get when you contribute to public radio:
an emblem of your contribution, but not necessarily a thing of any practical
value.

nickel

A ferromagnetic metal (Ni) and a US 5-cent coin
made from a zinc alloy. Five of just about anything. Another coin that would
be worth five pennies today is the shilling.

Nickel coins in other denominations, such as three and ten cents, have also
been issued by the US.

Two soups are made each morning, and both are usually available past the
next midnight. One of the soups may 86 in the small
hours, and by that time it may be wise to prefer
the salad anyway. Most years, I've noticed that GFS switches suppliers for iceberg lettuce around
December or January, and the salad in local restaurants improves noticeably.
(This is the kind of fine, sensitive observation that makes most people tingle
with ennui. I shoulda beena poet.)

Friday: a pretty busy night. Chicken soup and clam chowder. Have
to have a seafood option, of course.

Saturday: cream of broccoli and chicken with rice.

Croutons (crunchy brown right square prisms of deep-fried bread, very popular)
are available on Tuesday and Sundays. Research for this entry is ongoing, and
in fall 2004 they shuffled the options a little bit, but I wanted to share our
findings in real time.

I wasn't sure, so one time I asked Mario (the third-shift cashier-and-seater
for most nights) whether he pronounced his name ``Mario or Mario?'' He
answered no, he pronounced it ``Mario.'' It's a good thing we didn't conduct
that conversation in ASCII.

Neonate Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
A likely destination for ELBW newborns. That
probably about does it for useful related information in this glossary, but the
Apgar score entry might amuse some of you
sickos (sickoes?).

Oh wait -- it's a technical term. It's used by the US CIA (the CIA based in DC, not the one in NY),
intended to mean ``Estimation by National Intelligence Service''
(capitalization for impact and prestige only) and actually meaning ``opinion of
a single memo-writer, based on analysis that consists of ignoring data that
contradicts opinion.''

NIEO

New International Economic Order. On May 1, 1974, the UN General Assembly, at the end of its Sixth Special
Session, adopted by consensus two resolutions entitles ``Declaration on the
Establishment of a New International Economic Order'' and ``Programme of Action
on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order.'' As my Uncle Fritz would have commented, they were printed on
very good paper.

The rating is the number of homes with the program tuned in, expressed as a
percentage of all homes with televisions, whether or not they are in use. The
share is the percentage of televisions in use tuned to a program.

Not Invented Here. As in ``NIH syndrome.'' Interestingly, then, since the
NIH syndrome is a mental problem, it should be a matter for the NIMH. The NIH syndrome is the prejudice that the
company has all the relevant expertise and should ignore outside tinkerers
and dilettantes. For example, on the advice of its expert panel, the Telegraph
Company (which later became Western
Union) turned down Alexander Graham Bell's offer to buy the rights to the
telephone for $100,000. The in-house experts realized that it was an
unreliable, unpromising toy that could never be made to work over long
distances and that no one would ever want anyway.

A trivial logical corollary of the proposition that what was NIH is no good is
the proposition that if it is any good, then it was invented here. This
is the fundamental intellectual reflex of the Microsoft Corporation.

NII

They used to give
prizes. I don't remember who ``they'' were, but they gave up the domain
name. Oh! I know what to do! Go over to The Internet Archive and paste the URL
(http://www.gii-awards.com/winners.htm) into ``The Wayback Machine.'' Ah-hah:
NII stands (stood?) for the National Information Infrastructure. The site
featured Vice President Albert Gore, and was abandoned some time in 2000.
Didn't we have an election that year?

NIIP

Net International Investment Position. The NIIP of a country is the value
of foreign assets owned by its residents minus the value of its assets owned by
nonresidents.

I have before me a physical copy of a research report entitled ``The Sexual
Victimization of College Women.'' Naturally, I was greatly disappointed that
it lacked any racy anecdotal data or illustrations, but it seems to be a
fair-minded study by disinterested researchers. (Yaaawn.) See here, the first
paragraph of the Conclusions bends over backwards to be balanced. It begins

The sexual victimization of college students has emerged as a controversial
issue, pitting feminist scholars who claim that the sexual victimization of
women is a serious problem against conservative commentators who claim that
such victimization is rare and mostly a fictitious creation of ideologically
tainted research. ...

It's too bad the scholars don't have any feminist commentators to lend them
any moral support. It sure must be lonely on that half of the political
spectrum. Further, when you consider that there are apparently no scholars
on the conservative side of the argument, it's surprising that
government-funded researchers bravely pretend that they can continue to
regard the contending sides in the debate as intellectually or even morally
equal. Of course, this was a scientific study, so any bias on the part of
the researchers would be irrelevant because it could not possibly affect the
study at any stage. I mean, contrariwise, if it could affect the study,
then it wouldn't be very scientific, so it didn't. That's logic.

A charitable organization that raises money by selling sneakers made
in Korea at many times their cost of manufacture, and which donates much
of the proceeds to individual professional athletes or to the athletic
programs of `amateur' university athletes as ``advertising royalties.''

nil

A noun that means nothing. That's not as
strange as it sounds. It also functions as an adjective and adverb.

Niles

The name of cities in southwest
Michigan (on the Saint Joseph River, and on the Indiana border) and
in northeastern Ohio. Both cities
were named for Hezekiah
Niles (1777-1839). He achieved fame as the editor of the
Niles Weekly
Register, which he published from 1811 to 1836, and which was one of
the most influential magazines of the US in its day. I can't think of any
locality that was named for anyone else famous only or primarily for his work
as a journalist or commentator.

The Niles in Michigan is close to where I live, so it's mentioned at various
entries in this glossary. Ring Lardner, a nationally famous writer, was a
native of Niles. A scrap of his writing, and indications of how he is
commemorated, can be found at this GF entry.
Niles is part of the loosely defined region known as
Michiana, but that entry doesn't say much about
Niles itself. Until Indiana adopted DST, Michiana
was split through the middle by a kind of time zone boundary, and that's how
Niles gets a mention at that entry. Pokagon was
a nineteenth-century Indian chief in the area. There's some local color from
the Depression era at the entry for
``Shave and a haircut, two
bits.'' Southwestern Michigan College has a campus in Niles, and that's
what this SMC entry is about.

There's a Niles Canyon in the San Francisco Bay area of California. There was
a town of Niles in that canyon. I suppose the name dates from around the time
of the gold rush of 1849, or not long after, so it was probably named after
Hezekiah Niles or his Weekly or both as well. Another possibility is that it
was named after one of the eastern Nileses by someone who came from there. The
town of Niles eventually joined the towns of Centerville, Irvington, Mission
San Jose, and Warm Springs to form the city of Fremont, and each of these is
still an identifiable district of Fremont. Here's a link to the
Niles district of Fremont, California.

NILIE

National Initiative for
Leadership and Institutional Effectiveness. ``In the 21st century, the
successful institutions of higher education will be those that are learning new
ways of communicating with and motivating faculty, staff, administration and
students.'' Whoa, NILIE! And here I thought it would be the ones with
the best football programs. ``By conducting research on leadership and
institutional effectiveness using specialized surveys, NILIE assists
institutions in developing strategies that improve student success through
collaborative leadership.''

NIM

National Institute of Metrology. There's one in China, so-called in
English.

NIM

Nuclear Instrumentation Module (an electronic instr. standard).

NIMA

National Infomercial Marketing
Association. ``In August, 1990, nine industry leaders formed the
National Infomercial Marketing Association, an organization whose objective
was to ensure that all infomercials met the very highest standards of
excellence and credibility'' ... wait for it ...``attainable.''

``[O]fficially changed its name in May 1994 to NIMA International.''
Also now represents television shopping companies and short-form direct
response marketers. Oh joy.

``To eliminate confusion, NIMA International would prefer to be referred
to as, `the association that represents the worldwide electronic retailing
industry.' Please do not refer to NIMA as the National Infomercial Marketing
Association.'' You could call them vermin, if only that weren't unfairly
insulting to rats.

NIMBY

Not In My Back Yard. This acronym is not likely to appear on signs carried
by protesters at the town council meeting, despite the admirable degree of
compression. The term is used, instead, as the name of a situation or an
attitude. The situation is that certain necessary or desired facilities (dumps
for nuclear and other waste, community-based homes for the slow, low-income
housing) are inconvenient or unwelcome no matter where they are sited. (The
ultimate logical conclusion of seriously avoiding the NIMBY situation is BANANA.) The attitude is ``I don't care where you put
it, so long as it's [NIMBY]!'' Depending on how you view the merits or
reasonableness of the objection, the acronym is either sympathetic or
pejorative. (It's usually a pejorative noun.)

Nim Chimpsky

A play on the name Noam
Chomsky; a chimp who was taught a human sign language. To what degree he
learned, or could have learned, is the subject of controversy. Chomsky has
also been a subject of controversy.

Noam Chomsky's nonpolitical thoughts are less controversial. Widely though
not universally accepted is his position that the ability to use language is
uniquely human, with the proviso that true language has an indefinitely
productive grammar: a user can apply linguistic rules to express new thoughts
with old words. (New to him, her, or it, at least.) Chomsky is a philosopher,
so he shuns experiment and reasons from what he supposes he might find if, God
or Whatever forbid, he ever tried an experiment. Others are not so
constrained.

The first modern tests to determine whether a non-human animal could learn to
produce a human language were conducted with chimps and spoken languages.
(Produce, that is, as a communication of the ideas the language is intended to
communicate, and not as parroted speech.) In the 1930's, W.N. and L.A. Kellogg
raised a baby chimpanzee named Gua together with their own infant son Donald.
The project began when Gua was 7 or 8 months old and lasted 9 months; Gua never
learned to speak because they tried to teach her English instead of Purtuguese.
Okay, joke, but still she never learned to speak. In the 1950s, Keith and
Cathy Hayes adopted a female chimp, Viki, and tried to teach her to speak.
After three years, she was able to speak three words: mama, papa, and cup. She
never learned to say her own name, but that was probably because of the
irregular spelling. She also had a heavy whispery accent. Planet of the Apes, this wasn't.

These experiments were not considered successes. Since primate vocal apparatus
is substantially less versatile than human, however, it was plausible that the
failure of those experiments did not reflect any cognitive deficiency in
primates, but just physical impediment. In 1966, R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice
Gardner at University of Nevada, Reno, began the first experiment to teach a
primate a non-vocal human language. Their Washoe project (named after
Washoe County, Nev.), was intended to teach American Sign Language (ASL) to a chimpanzee they named Washoe. Washoe learned
over a hundred signs, used them individually in semantically appropriate ways,
and apparently even taught a number of them to an infant she adopted. She has
been less reliably credited with more sophisticated achievements, but the
question remained whether she ever grasped any elements of grammar. She used
words together that might be interpreted as compounds (water and bird for swan;
I don't know that the bird wasn't near water) and collocations that might be
regarded as sentences except that there was apparently no consistent syntactic
pattern to the collocations. A subsequent project of Francine Patterson, begun
in 1972, taught a female gorilla named Koko to sign hundreds of ASL signs and
to understand words of spoken English. She apparently notices rhyme in English
and has constructed a number of what seem to be compound nouns.

In order to address more sharply the grammatical question raised by the earlier
primate-ASL studies, Herbert S. Terrace began the Nim project. The subject of
the study, Nim Chimpsky, was born in 1973 and raised and socialized like a
human infant. Nim appeared to learn American Sign
Language, and by age four had mastered a 125-sign vocabulary. In the end,
however, Terrace was not convinced that Nim had really mastered language.
After analyzing more than 20,000 different combinations of signs produced by
Nim (this study was far more intensively videotaped than the earlier ones), he
concluded that Nim signed mainly to obtain particular rewards and that most of
his signed combinations were unoriginal imitations of those uttered by his
human teachers, rather than original sentences demonstrating a constructive
understanding of ASL's grammar. Terrace wrote an article on the experiment for
Psychology Today in 1979: ``How Nim Chimpsky Changed My Mind.''

In the appositely named movie Bananas, Woody Allen plays Fielding
Mellish, a nebbish
upon whom ill-conceived consumer products are tested. His parents wanted him
to become a surgeon like his dad. In one scene, he visits his parents in the
operating theater (mom is an OR nurse), and they try on the spot to involve him
in the family business. Parents, natural and adoptive, often see their
children with eyes blinded by love and hope. Read this ``chat'' with Koko and
see what you think.

NIMH

National Institute of Mental
Health (Administration: Rockville, MD; Research Facilities in Bethesda, MD
and St. Elizabeth's in DC). Conveniently
located, if you see what I mean.

NIckel-MOlybdenum-VAnadium. A popular strong material for generator
rotors.

nimporta

One day, after I hung up the phone, my office mate Nobu asked for the
meaning of a word I had been using repeatedly. I didn't recognize it in his
pronunciation, despite the fact that Japanese and
Spanish phonemes are not very different. He
wrote out the headword above in romaji. ``Oh,'' I said, ``you mean
no importa'' [`it doesn't matter']. Cf.tsuh cay, sin
embargo.

A backward capital en looks like the Cyrillic letter
normally transliterated I. Korn, a metallic
punk band out of Southern California, also writes its
name KORN with a backwards ar. I have just one link to say about this: ABBA.

A backward-facing ar looks like the Cyrillic letter normally transliterated ia
or ya. Toys'R'Us does the same thing as KORN with its ar. Maybe you
want to go to SeaRs. (Sounds like ``See youse'' if you've got the accent.)

No Income, No Job or Assets. Disqualifications for any sane mortgage;
conditions for an initially interest-only loan, with negative amortization and
an initial teaser rate. No longer available, I hope.

Niño, El

The (Christ) Child. Name for a meteorological
phenomenon that involves higher water surface temperatures in the Pacific.
The phenomenon is persistent on year time-scales, and the change from normal
to El Niño conditions first becomes noticeable very roughly
around Christmas, by fishermen off the coast of Peru, who gave it its name.

National Infrastructure Protection
Center. You have to question the competence of an organization without the
sense to define an index.html page. Aww, shucks -- it's just the FBI, no wonder. So they moved from the old URL and didn't leave a
forwarding link. Good move. Cover your tracks.

``Established in February 1998, the NIPC's mission is to serve as the U.S.
government's focal point for threat assessment, warning, investigation, and
response for threats or attacks against our critical infrastructures. These
infrastructures, which include telecommunications, energy, banking and finance,
water systems, government operations, and emergency services, are the
foundation upon which our industrialized society is based.''

NIPDWR

National (US) Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulation.

NIPER

National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research. A DoE facility run by BDM-Oklahoma. Partly privatized in 1996.

NIR

Near-InfraRed. Usually spoken as ``near eye arr.'' Remember, in your best
schoolmarmish voice, to say ``near I am!'' See the
IR entry for the ranges of the common named
regions of the IR spectrum.

An act of 1933 that allowed companies, subject to government approval,
to join in industrial councils which were allowed to do the things that
were illegal under antitrust law (set prices, control production). The
act required all members to allow unionization of and engage in collective
bargaining with their employees. The law was struck down by the Supreme
Court in 1935, as being in violation of the Interstate Commerce clause.

``Northern Ireland Railways was
founded in 1968 to operate the railway services of the former Ulster
Transport Authority, which in turn had taken over the three private railways
(Great Northern Railway, Northern Counties Railway and Co. Down Railway) in
Northern Ireland between 1948 and 1957.''

New Israeli Shekel. The current (2004) currency of Israel. One hundred
agorot equal one shekel. The NIS went into
circulation in September 1985, replacing the shekel that had been in
circulation from 1980. Before 1980, the national currency was called the lira
(pound).

The old shekel suffered through a hyperinflation that reduced its value against
the US dollar by a factor of 250 over the six years it was in circulation. One
NIS was an exchange for 1000 old shekels.

Nisei

Second-generation Japanese-American. Pronounced approximately ``knee
say.'' Singular and plural forms of the noun coincide, because Japanese does
not inflect nouns for number. See first-generation entry for some
complicating thoughts.

National Institute of Statistical
Sciences. ``NISS was established in 1991 by the national statistics
societies and the Research Triangle universities [in North Carolina] and
organizations, with the mission to identify, catalyze and foster high-impact,
cross- disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences.''

National Invitational Tournament. This tournament used to be in direct
head-to-head competition with the NCAA basketball
tournament, trying to get participation by many of the same schools, in the
same way that different post-season college bowl games used to compete for the
same football teams (before the devising of that brilliant solution known as
the BCS). Now the NIT just goes after the teams
that didn't get a bracket in the NCAA tournament. There's also a
WNIT, although that works somewhat differently.

nitle

Not In The Latest Explorator. The
Explorator is
a weekly internet bulletin consisting of web links to archaeological news. It
usually comes out on Sunday morning. In compiling each edition, David Meadows
often comes across items that are not appropriate to Explorator but which
nevertheless fall within the very broad range of topics considered appropriate
for the classics list
(an electronic mailing list for the
discussion of classical antiquity and anything else that participants have the
audacity to pretend is related to classical antiquity). When he published
Explorator, David Meadows often also posted those links to those items
separately, to the classics list. (I think that practice pretty much ended
during the shot-put blow-up in October 2003. He wants you to read his rogueclassicism blog
instead.) The subject heads used to begin with the words ``Not in the latest
Explorator'' but this has been abbreviated to ``nitle'' since May or June 2003,
around the same time that Meadows stopped using the a.a.h.i.h.l.n.o.o. abbreviation.

Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. A political party organized
a couple of months before the June 1996 vote for representative delegates
to all-party peace talks. The term coalition was chosen by the
party to emphasize (sorry: emphasise) that it is neither political nor
a party.

After all, Aristotle said only that Man is a political animal.
(What a beast! Emphasis added; italics, and English for that matter, were
more than a millennium away.) Or did he? This is a common translation,
but it is clear in context that he meant that man is a social
animal. Same problem with his `Poetics.'

Probably the thing that first-time visitors to New Jersey find most surprising
is that it is uninhabitable. This is especially surprising when you consider
that it's the most densely populated state of the US, but in fact, that's one
of the reasons. New Jersey is actually populated by human guinea pigs who are
exposed to every available chemical pollutant. It's not a coincidence that two
of New Jersey's biggest industries are chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Another reason that New Jersey is uninhabitable is the road system. It's
illegal for roads anywhere in the state to be straight for a distance exceeding
half a mile. And although the state has an approximately convex shape, the
shortest distance between two points in it is usually by a path out to New
York or Pennsylvania, around, and back in again.

New Jersey is not a community
property state, but for real estate property it sort of works like one.

The latest color scheme for automobile licence plates in New Jersey has a
background that starts out white at the bottom and shades smoothly to yellow at
the top. This represents smog. (Ohio has white
plates shading to reddish browns at the bottom. This represents rust or rich
earth and, on recent nonfarm vehicles, makes it easier to distinguish them from
Ontario plates for people who can't remember which name is longer.)

In Spanish, New Jersey is normally called
Nueva Jersey,
where the first word (meaning `new') has its usual Spanish pronunciation. The
second word is pronounced neither in English nor according to Spanish rules
applied to the English spelling. Instead, it is pronounced in a Spanish
approximation of the English. In my dialect of Spanish, for example, which has
a zh sound (for ll and most y), ``Jersey'' is pronounced as if it were spelled
``Llersi.'' In other words, not a single consonant or vowel is the same. (The
first vowel in Spanish is more open than in the American pronunciation and also
has no r coloring. It sounds even further from the British vowel. The r is
articulated differently, the s is unvoiced, and the i is more clipped.)

This naturalized pronunciation is used even by Spanish-speakers who are
perfectly fluent in English. And that is very natural, but possibly not as
some may imagine. An English-speaker who gratuitously pronounces naturalized
French words or place names in French sends a signal (possibly not the one
intended). Pronouncing France as ``Frrrawnce'' may send the signal that
one knows French, and may be received as a signal that one is a pretentious
twit. Pronouncing Paris as ``Paree'' is (or was, a mere 80 years ago)
an affectionate affectation, a suggestion of fond memories. I don't think that
the Spanish pronunciation of Jersey as described in the previous
paragraph has much to do with these social phenomena, because for
Spanish-speakers, English and the English-speaking lands have never had the
kind of intellectual cachet or romantic associations that French and France,
respectively, have had for English-speakers. (Granted, the US today has
prestige in certain things, but it's not the kind of prestige that rubs off on
anyone who happens to speak English.) The reason one uses a Spanish
pronunciation of Jersey is either (a) one can't produce an English
pronunciation or, (b) more interestingly, it is more comfortable not to switch
phonemic systems.

The letter j in Spanish is pronounced like the English h, so one might expect a
naturalized spelling to develop. One has: Nueva Yersey. (This spelling
implies a final diphthong. For comparison, a common and fairly faithful
naturalized Spanish spelling of English okay is okey.) But
Yersey seems (from ghits) to be about a hundred times less common than
Jersey, and I haven't seen it in major references. Even the English Channel
island Jersey and the clothing material jersey have their English spelling in
Spanish. In Portuguese, New Jersey is ``Nova Jersey.''

I can see a couple of reasons why Jersey was assigned a feminine gender in both
Portuguese and Spanish. Morphology does not offer a firm guide, but I suppose
that a final /i/ sound in a toponym suggests the standard feminine -ia ending.
(For comparison, Italy is Italia in Spanish, and Turkey is
Turquía.) Moreover, the Latin name of
the largest English Channel island is Caesarea, which is feminine.
(Jersey is widely supposed to be a corruption of this, but there is an
alternative etymology I can't find right now, which has the advantage of
explaining the -sey in Jersey and Guernsey as a common Germanic
or Celtic morpheme. The Latin name of Guernsey is Samia.) For a more
problematic case, see NY.

New
Jerusalem Bible. Published in 1985, a revision of the first
English-language ``Jerusalem Bible'' (TJB) of 1966.
The English-language Jerusalem Bibles followed earlier French versions (1956,
rev. 1973), and were in part simply retranslations from the French (though
these were ``checked carefully'' against the Hebrew and Greek, of course).
These are all Roman Catholic Bibles and include the Apocrypha. The prose is
accessibly flat-footed. Like most translations still, it is intended to be
read not primarily as literature but as doctrinal nonfiction, and to this end
the NJB contains some interpretive notes.
The NJB incorporates some formatting innovations over TJB: a single column of
text and poetic passages lineated as verse; bold section headings.
The 1956 French basis, popularly known as La Bible de Jérusalem,
was prepared by the Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem. I doubted that it
had anything to do with Jerusalem; now I shall burn in Hell for eternity.

National Journalism Center. They're
in favor of ``objective journalism,'' as everyone is. Sponsored as they are by
Young America's Foundation, their notion of
``objective'' coincides with the MSM's notion of
``nutty right-wing.'' NJC has an amusing little graphic with a small rogues
gallery captioned ``NOT NJC Grads.'' The pictures are
of Peter Arnett (whose journalism career ended badly at
CNN in 1998, and then re-ended badly at
NBC in 2003), Stephen Glass (whose journalism career
ended badly at The New Republic), Jayson
Blair (whose journalism career ended badly at the
New York Times), and Dan Rather (whose
newsanchor career ended on rather a sour note at
CBS).

On its website, NJC has a practice of indicating in bylines the time that a
reporter participated in NJC's internship program (I think that's it), the way
colleges tag graduates in their alumni newsletters (e.g., ``Greg Myre
(NJC spring '83)''). In an archive of articles with no other date information,
this can be disorienting.

The NJCA sponsors an e-mail list ``to offer New
Jersey classics teachers a forum to discuss and share news about classics,
school programs, questions and ideas.'' Subscribe by sending a blank email to
<NJCA-subscribe@topica.com>.

The NJCA fall meeting in 1997 was on November 8, at the Newark Museum. John
Bodel of Rutgers gave the keynote address, ``Putting Roman Artisans in
Perspective,'' and Susan Auth, Curator of the Classical Collection, gave an
introduction to the collection. I suppose. That was the agenda anyway.

The fall
meeting in 1999 was Saturday, October 30. It was held at the High
Technology High School in Lincroft -- appropriately enough, since its focus
was on the use of computers and the internet.

Research demonstrates that girls named ``Virginia'' are at increased risk of
becoming high-schoolLatin
teachers active in their state classical associations. There is no need to
panic -- most girls with this name grow up to lead normal, fulfilling lives.
Watch out for early warning signs, however, such as going by the nickname
``Ginny.''

National Jewish Coalition for Literacy.
``The National Jewish Coalition for Literacy is a coalition of 17 national
Jewish agencies and organizations and 37 local community affiliates committed
to help all America's children learn to read by the end of 3rd grade. NJCL's
affiliates mobilize and train volunteer tutors of all races and creeds who
offer one-on-one help in public schools.''

NJCL

National Junior Classical League. A group for high school students of
Ancient Greek, Latin
and anything else to do with classical antiquity. Main entry at JCL.

NJCRAC

National (US) Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

NJHS

National Junior Honor Society. Sort of a junior varsity to the
National Honor Society (NHS, q.v.).

There's really no place you can insert the word junior in National
Honor Society and have it mean what it's supposed to mean and nothing else.

Non-Judicial Punishment. US military term for discipline imposed
administratively, without a court-martial.

NJPAC

New Jersey Performing Arts
Center. In Newark. You can probably guess whether that's the Newark in
New Jersey or the one in Delaware from the
pronunciation. (The one in Delaware uses an ay sound rather than a shwa in the
second syllable, and the word has correspondingly more even stress.)

New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. It ``was created by the New
Jersey legislature in 1971 and is the governing body which oversees the
operations of Continental Airlines Arena, Giants Stadium [more at the
striKe entry], Meadowlands Racetrack,'' the final resting
place of Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa (unmarked), ``Monmouth Park
Racetrack in Oceanport, N.J., Atlantic City
Convention Center, Historic Boardwalk Hall and the Wildwoods Convention
Center.''

Continental Airlines Arena used to be called Brendan Byrne Arena at the
Meadowlands, after Governor Brendan Byrne, who aggressively promoted New Jersey tourism and pushed the construction of the
Meadowlands complex. The arena was financed by bond issues. The budgetary
achievement for which Brendan Byrne was better known was getting New Jersey an
income tax. I remember a lot of grumbling when Meadowlands Arena, already
completed, was renamed for Byrne. When Continental paid to put its own name
on it, it was a largely unresented bit of sports meretriciousness.

Some readers will be surprised that New Jersey managed without an income tax
until the early 1970's. Most states did without an income tax until the
nineteen-sixties. One of the big federal-government ideas of the 1960's
was Revenue Sharing. The idea was that state revenues, based principally on
sales taxes, were regressive or at least not progressive. Also, due to the
regressive base and other causes, state revenue dipped more sharply in a
recession, while state expenditures, more heavily weighted to social services
and transfers, increased more at the same time. Finally, since states must balance their
budgets (on paper, anyway), they have a harder time than the
federal government to square the decreased revenue and increased expenditure.
Revenue Sharing was direct federal funding of state expenditures, intended to
address all these problems.

NJT

New Jersey Transit. To judge by ghits, if you see ``NJT'' it is rather more likely to
refer to New Jersey Transit than to the New Jersey Turnpike. However, many
misguided people (possibly a majority) abbreviate the New Jersey Turnpike by
NJT rather than NJTP.

New Jersey Transit is an operator of commuter trains mostly connecting the New Jersey suburbs and New York
City. (A lot of the lines stop in Hoboken; from there you take a
PATH train or ferry into the city.) They also have a
line connecting Philadelphia with Atlantic City. I'll play it safe and not
characterize further -- here's a route map as
of May 6, 2002. You can get between Philadelphia and New York by
transferring between SEPTA and NJT in Trenton.
(I doubt you'd be wanting to stay in Trenton. If you want to stretch your
legs, get off at Princeton Junction and take the spur to beautiful Princeton.
That spur figures briefly in the Rebecca Goldsmith book mentioned at the trivial entry.)

Neighborhood Junior Tennis Program.
``[A] non-profit organization located in Sylmar, California. Founded in 1992
by six childhood friends, NJTP provides low-cost group and private lessons to
children in our neighborhood.''

NJTP

New Jersey TurnPike. The NJTP and the Garden
State Parkway (GSPW) are operated by
the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA).

The NJTP logo consists of lettering and a polygonal frame in white against a
green background. Large letters T and P appear in the middle, offset but
overlapping, with smaller letters N and J positioned as bookends, and TURNPIKE
in tiny caps running between the N and J, across the middle of the TP.
Something like this, though the large TP is thicker:

It suggests NTPJ, probably
abbreviating the word Nturnpikej. Whoever designed this apparently didn't
understand how logos should work. He must have wondered why IBM didn't use the
more symmetric BIM. To give the devil his due, however,
the logo does suggest the general northeast-southwest direction of the
Turnpike's main line, through the diagonal offset of the large letters TP and
the conforming shape of the frame (an irregular hexagon with opposite sides
parallel, made by cutting the upper left and lower right corners of a
rectangle). Also, the letters are crowded together and haven't moved in at
least forty years, which is a fair description of rush hour traffic. Okay,
maybe that's not a good thing. But it does at least strongly suggest that the
officially preferred abbreviation is NJTP (which helps avoid confusion with NJ Transit).

P. Simon and A. Garfunkel have described research
(counting the cars on the NJTP), and reported a surprising finding: ``They've
all come to look for America.'' Maps are available at rest areas (called service areas),
which are named after famous unknowns.

(That used to say ``...after obscure luminaries.'' It was a better
oxymoron if one attended the original literal
senses of the words, but morons like you, dear reader, just didn't ``get
it.'' We had no choice but to abase the vocabularary. After all, we wouldn't
want to do anything to make anyone feel
inadequate.)

NJTPA

New Jersey TurnPike Authority. Reasonable but unofficial abbreviation;
use NJTA.

National League (of baseball). The ``National League of Professional
Base Ball [sic] Clubs'' was formed in New York on February 1, 1876.
The older of the two component leagues of North American Major League Baseball
(MLB). The one that still does not use the
designated hitter.

NL

Natural Language. When people explicitly specify natural language, they're
often about the business of NLP.

Postal abbreviation for the Canadian
(.ca) province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
For a bit of history, see the entry for the earlier postal abbreviation NF (official to Oct. 21, 2002; usable at least for six
months afterwards).

The capital of Newfoundland and Labrador is St. John's; it's the only
provincial or state capital in all of the Americas with an apostrophe in its
name. (FWIW, the province of New Brunswick has a Saint John County which consists
essentially of the port city Saint John and a few miles of coast on either
side.)

NLA

Norfolk Landscape Archaeology. A Gressenhall-based organization that
records and maps finds in Norfolk (a county in England). The NLA's staff
includes 20 archaeologists. More archaeological objects are found in Norfolk
than any other county in Britain; in 2004 there were over 27,000. All members
of the reserves are required to maintain a metal detector in good working
condition and ready for immediate use. One sentence in this paragraph is false.

This is probably the ideal entry at which to point out that the UK spelling of
artifacts is artefacts.

National Learning
Corporation. ``You've come to the right place to search for your test
preparation books.'' (To tell you the truth, I hadn't realized that I'd
misplaced them.)

Many study guides and cram courses are available for the well-known admissions
tests and professional licensing exams, but NLC seems to be the organization
that helps one prepare for civil service exams. For example, I have before me
C-1727 of its Career Examination Series (CES):
Assistant Supervisor (Elevators and Escalators) Passbook. (Plastic
bound -- lies flat for study ease!)

They also have supervisor and foreman volumes for elevators and escalators.
It's no wonder they claim their passbooks (R) are ``Preferred By More Test
Takers.''

I got my copy of Assistant Supervisor (Elevators and Escalators)
Passbook (copyright 1991) off the discount table at Borders. It had been
reduced from
$29.95 to $15.00 to $1. This time they skipped the 75%-off stage. I also
picked up a bunch of decade-old conference proceedings from Springer-Verlag
for a buck apiece. I couldn't resist, Springers are usually very dear. Soon
you'll be reading entries like BIER, which I found
on page 566 of Computer Aided Systems Theory -- EUROCAST '91 : A
Selection of Papers from the Second International Workshop on Computer Aided
Systems Theory, Krems, Austria, April 1991
Proceedings, F. Pichler and R.
Moreno Díaz (Eds.), published as volume 585 of Springer's Lecture
Notes in Computer Science Series (originally $111.95, now priced to move at
$1). I'm not putting this down -- half the publications in my CV are older than this.

One thing the Springers and the NLC's have in common is that they didn't
require a lot of effort on the part of the publishing house. The NLC thing
looks like fuzzy photocopies of typed pages, with bold sans-serif headings
applied separately (the tape backing shows through). The
Springer volumes were prepared by the contributors, each set of notes in its
own font. Springer has some really excellent professional books in mathematics
and physics, but their business in conference proceedings is pure slumming.

I also picked up How To Run For Public Office And Win : A Step By Step
Guide. It started out at a price intermediate between the NLC and
the big Springer volumes -- $54.95 -- but at a buck it was clearly the worst
deal. It's the thinnest of the three (ca. 85 pp., about a third the page
count of the Elevators volume and a tenth that of the EUROCAST '91 volume).
It has the best font, and pictures, but the grammar is not all there. It's
not as technically sophisticated as the book for Assistant supervisors
(Elevators and Escalators) either. On page 79, the candidate learns that
being drunk at a public gathering with reporters
is definitely a bad idea. Still, perhaps the authors know their readership.

You'd figure that there ought to be a ``Running for Public Office for Dummies''
book, but
a search at Amazon.com yields only

Books Search Results: we were unable to find exact matches for your search for
"Dummies public office".

It may be that for partial matches, Barnes and Noble has a better algorithm
than Amazon.com (or worse, depending on what you seek). A
search on ``Dummies Public Office'' there turned up books on Public
Relations, Public Speaking, and Successful Presentations in the for-Dummies
series, and a similar search yielded a nice assortment from the Complete
Idiot's Guide and Pocket Idiot's Guide series.

Borders was mentioned in an article I read in CHE
recently (July 20, 2001 issue). It turns out that 2000-2001 was a cruddy year
for university presses. The fiscal year ended in June, and hard numbers are
either unavailable or embarrassed secrets, but nobody met sales targets and
most presses lost money. In recent years Borders had boosted UP distribution
by carrying a lot of their titles, but no more. I'll be keeping an eye on
those bargain tables.

National League (NL) Championship Series.
Used to be best-of-five, back when each league of Major League Baseball (MLB) consisted of two divisions (NL East and NL
West in this case). Then, it was played between the two division winners
(the teams with the best regular-season records in their respective divisions).
The winner of the series, the NL champion team, would go on to meet the AL champion in the World
Series.

After an expansion and a reorganization in 1995, there are three divisions,
and the NL champion is determined in an NL playoff series that consists of two
rounds: the NL Division Series (NLDS), best-of-five,
followed by the NLCS, best-of-seven.

If you need a review, all of the preceding information is repeated with
slightly different wording at the LCS entry.

NLDS, N.L.D.S.

National League Division Series. The first round of the NL playoff series
of Major League Baseball (MLB), explained in the
NLCS entry above. Four teams are paired in
best-of-five series to determine which two teams go to the NLCS.

The teams that meet in the NLDS are the winners of the three divisions (East,
Central, West) and one wildcard team. The division champion is the team with
the best W-L record in its division. (The division
championship is called the penant, and competition for this, heating up toward
the end of the regular season, is called the penant race.) All regular-season
games count equally in determining the division champion, whether the games are
against an intra-division rival, a team outside the division but in the same
league, or in another division. (For a long time before the reorganization
into 3+3 divisions, there were no interleague games during the regular season
apart from the All-Star game.) The wildcard is the team with the best record
among the remaining teams -- i.e., the second-place team with the best
record.

If, at the end of the regular season, two teams are tied for first place in
a division or two second-place teams (possibly in the same division) have
identical records, then a single play-off game to determine the division
champion or league wildcard. I don't know what happens when three or more
teams are tied this way. We've come pretty close to having three or more
potential wildcards since the 1995 reorganization.

[In (American) football, there are fewer games and schedules are much more
rigid, so ties are broken by formulas, in which games count differently
depending on whether they were played against opponents in or out of the
division, etc.]

Home field advantage in the division series and the championship series are
both determined by the same rules:

The wildcard team never has home-field advantage.

Priority among division champions is determined on the basis of
regular-season won-lost record.

NLE

National (US) Latin Exam.
Sponsored by the American Classical League (ACL) and the Junior Classical League (JCL). Primarily for high school students in the US and
Canada. Not a requirement for admission to
anyplace I've heard of, just an academic competition. There are other exams
sponsored by the same organizations, in Classical Greek (NGE) and mythology.

(The URL has varied a bit; make sure you're using the correct one. It moved to
<http://nle.aclclassics.org> on April 22, 2002.)

NLE

National Library of Education.

NLEA

Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. Requires all packaged foods
to carry labels with nutrition information. There are a fair number of
exceptions, and the FDA has authority to make exceptions and additions, even
on a regional basis. You could read
a summary of the act, part of the extensive
legislative information resources here.

NLF

National Labor Federation. Also abbreviated NATLFED. Not what you'd
expect: Followers of the late Eugenio (`Gino') Perente-Ramos (b. Gerald William Doeden; d. 1995, age
59), who are estimated to number in the hundreds, sometimes call themselves
the Provisional Communist Party or the National Labor Federation. As you
might imagine, they're not affiliated with anyone I am aware of.

Their indoctrination scheme involves cutting people off from their friends
and family and

forcing them to fill out unending amounts of completely meaningless paperwork!

National Lumber Manufacturers' Association. I see evidence that they were
in existence in 1915 and 1964, and various times in between. I haven't figured
out what happened to them, but I know they didn't become the
NLBMDA.

NLO

Next-to-Leading Order. The second nonvanishing order of contributions to
some calculated quantity. Preceded by LO (more
discussion there) and followed by NNLO.

Natural-Language Processing. That is, unnatural language processing. The
NLP term is usually expanded without the hyphen, because semantic details like
negation will be dealt with during a later phase of research. A brief online
history is available. See ``Progress in the Application of Natural
Language Processing to Information Retrieval Tasks,'' The Computer
Journal, 35, #3, pp. 268-277 (1992).

Near Letter Quality. Back around 1985, dot-matrix printers were the
affordable option for hardcopy output from personal personal computers. (The
business alternative for printing on letter-size paper was daisy-wheel
printers. Laser and ink-jet printers were futurama.) If I remember correctly,
eight-dot matrices (8 dot positions per line, covering the range from the
bottom of the descenders to the top of the risers) had been standard, and
23-dot matrices were coming out. The latter could give you ``NLQ'' at low
speed.

Noise Level Reduction. I think that's a good thing. A good thing.
Can't you hear me? I SAID IT'S A GOOD THING.

NLRA

National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935 after the
NIRA was found unconstitutional. Established the
NLRB. Major amendments were the Taft-Hartley Act
[which is more or less chapter seven of title 29 (Labor) of the US Code
(29 USC 7)].
the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959) [chapter eleven of the same title
(29 USC 11)].
The Taft-Hartley Act is officially the Labor-Management Relations Act of
1947, and the Landrum-Griffin Act is the Labor-Management Reporting and
Disclosure Act of 1959.
The Taft-Hartley Act is described in this glossary at the closed shop entry.

Originally, in keeping with the intentions of
the Democratic Congress and President (FDR) that
brought it into being, the NLRA did not allow public-sector unions to
bargain collectively for their employees. In 1962, President Kennedy's
(JFK's) executive order 10988 extended this
privilege to postal workers and some smaller categories of federal
employees.

``Throughout North America there is a serious need for Latin Teachers. Each
year, for lack of teachers, existing programs are cancelled, thriving programs
are told they cannot expand, and schools that want to add Latin are unable to
do so.''

Neiman Marcus. I learned this
in a chat room, as I was dying of boredom. N-M itself uses ``NM.''

If Neiman were pronunced according to English spelling, uh, rules, the first syllable would be pronounced like the
English words nay and neigh
instead of like knee. (In German it's like English nigh.)

A search on the words pronunciation and pronounced at the n-m
website only produced
the information that Nambé, which ``creates simple, elegant designs in
metal, porcelain, and crystal'' that are not inexpensive, was ``[c]hristened
for a tiny New Mexican [next entry] village near
Sante Fe, where the company was founded in 1951, is ``pronounced nom-BAY.''

National Materials Exchange Network.
Network communication
resource to enable the recycling of industrial materials and waste by
putting in contact the people for whom a material is poison with those for
whom it is meat. Won an NII award.

(Australian) National Measurement
Institute. NMI (not ``the NMI,'' apparently) was established on July 1,
2004, formed from the National Measurement Laboratory
(NML), the National Standards Commission
(NSC) and the Australian Government Analytical
Laboratories (AGAL), and continues their work.

nmi

Nautical MIle[s]. Defined to be exactly 1.852 kilometers.

The most convenient universal property of ``1.852'' that I can think of is that
8, 5, and 2 are lined up on decimal keypads. Hmmm.
Maybe there's more. The meter was originally
defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the
equator along the meridian through Paris. In other
words, the length of the quadrant through Paris. (Some people thought
it would make sense to measure longitude away from this meridian; I can't
imagine what they might have had against a zero meridian through London.)
There was a big scientific project to determine this distance, although they
didn't actually go to the North Pole or the equator. If no one had measured
the exact distance to the pole, I guess we'd never have learned the speed of
light, so this must have been an important project. Let's suppose that the
measurement was accurate, and that the earth is spherical to a good
approximation. In that case, the 10,000 km is the distance corresponding
to 90 angular degrees of lattitude, 90° of longitude measured at the
equator, or 90° measured along any great circle on Earth's surface. That
would mean that 59.9952 nmi would correspond to one degree, or about one
nautical mile to one minute of angle. Come think of it, one nautical mile per
minute of angle was the original definition.

Since one inch is defined (now) to be 2.54 cm, an
ordinary (i.e., a universal American) mile
is 1.609344 km, so
1 nmi = 1.1507794 mi.,
approximately.

If you came to this entry as part of the ``Meter Definition History Tour
Package,'' I'm afraid I have some bad news. Combs with suspiciously sharp
teeth were found in the carry-on baggage of tourists at the next few entries,
so as a precaution the tour will proceed directly to the current definition,
described at the entry for c, the speed of light.

NML

NanoMagnet[-based] Logic.

NML

(Australian) National Measurement Laboratory. Some time before 1983, when
CSIRO was created, NML became an entity within its
Division of Physics, at Sydney. On July 1, 2004, its staff, facilities, and
functions were incorporated into NMI when that
was established. At least until the transition is complete, the old website is useful.

New Mexico Military Institute.
``Founded in 1891, NMMI is a co-educational, residential, college preparatory
high school and two-year junior college in a military setting, located in
Roswell, New Mexico.''

Roswell, eh? Hmmm. Military? Mmm.

NMOP

National Mail-Order Pharmacy.

nMOS, NMOS

N-channel MOSFET, and any of the logic families based on it (which differ
primarily in the nature of load in the gates--depletion nMOS transistor,
enhancement nMOS, or resistor). ROM is most simply
implemented in nMOS logic (see next entry, nMOS
ROM).

The two main types of ROM based on
nMOS are NOR and
NAND. NAND is denser, but for a given set of design
rules its access time is longer and grows more rapidly with the number of rows.
NOR is less dense but has shorter access times. NOR memory can be programmed
much later in fabrication, as described at the PMP
entry.

In both memory types, each row (or ``word line'') is a conducting strip serving
as a common gate for all the transistors in that row -- one per column, or bit
line (videBL). In NOR memory, all memory
locations -- all transistors -- of a bit line are connected in parallel, like
the drive of an nMOS NOR gate. In NAND memory, all transistors of a BL are
connected in series.

Neonatal Mortality Rate. The number of neonatal (first 28 days of life)
deaths per thousand livebirths.

NMR

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Typically, this refers to the absorption
resonance of spin-split nuclear energy levels. Note that, since the
gyromagnetic ratio is inversely proportional to particle mass, at any
given magnetic field the nuclear/nucleon magnetic moment is on the order
of a thousand times smaller than the atomic/electronic resonance frequencies.
Thus, with EPR resonance at microwave frequencies, NMR is at radio
frequencies.

NMR became the basis of an important new medical imaging technology in
the 1980's. However, the word nuclear seems to have spooked a number
of people, because what was originally called ``NMR imaging `` became ``MRI.''
(Then again, see preceding NMR item.)

There's a Van Halen song from 1983, appearing on their 1984 album, with a refrain that sounds like
``NMR'' (nonrhotic British accent) or ``enema.''
It's hard to tell accents in song. For personal reasons, I prefer to
think it sounds like NMR. It's ``Panama.'' For related considerations,
see the mondegreen entry: deconstruction.

Actually, the band sang it with accent on the final syllable (actually a long
high note), so it sounded more like the pronunciation of the name
Panamá in Spanish.

NMRT

New Members Round Table (of the ALA). This
is your first round table, huh? Well, there are others, like SRRT.

NMS

National Medal of Science.
According to the American Society for Engineering Education [ASEE], ``...established by Congress in 1959 as a
Presidential award, has recognized 362 of America's leading scientists
and engineers. The evaluation criteria is based on the total
impact an individual's work has had on the present state of
physical, chemical, biological, mathematical, engineering,
behavioral or social sciences.''

Dang! If I had known about this desirable award, I would have worked at
least 40% harder to find a cure for cancer!

NMS

Network Management { System | Station }.

NMS

Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome.

NMT

National Medal of Technology.
According to the American Society for Engineering Education [ASEE], ``...established by Congress in 1980 as part
of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Act as a Presidential award, has
recognized 108 individuals and eight companies whose accomplishments
have generated jobs and created a better standard of living. Their
accomplishments best embody technological innovation and support the
advancement of global U.S. competitiveness.''

Nordic Mobile Telephone. This site
gives one company's not disinterested description. A standard developed by
Nordic Post and Telephone Administrations. Less efficient than GSM but
provides wider coverage for sparsely populated areas like, uh, Sweden!

Neural Net[work]. A network of nonlinear nodes patterned to mimic features
of biological neural systems. Back in the 1980's and even to this day, for all
I know, unimaginative researchers would churn out neural net papers by the
bushel, each one a slight perturbation of a thought different from the next.
A guy I knew who got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering had a long list of
conference publications from this sort of industry. Normally one would be
proud and happy to have many publications before the doctorate, but he actually
omitted a number of his papers because he found them embarrassing and expected
that they would be looked askance by prospective employers. Of course, there
were also a few worthwhile papers in the field. One NN paper that I haven't
read
is ``Use of neural networks to predict roasting time and weight loss for beef
joints,'' Food Service Technology, vol. 1, #1, pp. 53-59 (2001).

National Newspaper Publishers
Association. ``The National Newspaper Publishers Association, also known
as the Black Press of America, is a ... federation of more than 200 Black
community newspapers from across the United States [and the Virgin Islands].
Since World War II, it has also served as the industry's news service, a
position that it has held without peer or competitor since the Associated Negro
Press dissolved by 1970. ...''

The NNPA was founded in 1940 as the National Negro Publishers Association and
adopted its current name in 1956. Most of the member newspapers are weeklies.

Number Needed to Treat. The number of people who have to take a
treatment in order for one person to benefit directly. (A treatment, for the
purposes of this definition, is understood very generally: receiving a
vaccination, following a particular diet, and following a particular drug
regimen all qualify as treatments.) The specific term abbreviated by NNT has
apparently been promoted by epidemiologists since 1988.

The idea is that many preventive treatments (see above) are prescribed for
healthy people who aren't likely to suffer the malady being ``prevented.'' In
this case, it was conventional to distinguish absolute and relative risk
reduction. If p0 is the risk without the treatment (that is, the
probability of contracting the disease or what have you, over a specified
period of time, yadda, yadda, yadda), and p1 is the risk with the
treatment (taken over a specified period and/or in a specified dose,
yadcetera), then p0 - p1 is the absolute
reduction in risk, and this quantity divided by p0 is the relative
reduction in risk.

[One of the more important yaddas is that in a properly designed clinical study
of a drug's effectiveness, p0 is determined for a control group that
receives a placebo, and whether a study participant is in the control group or
in the group receiving the test drug is determined randomly. I think that
maybe what you can buy at organic-food stores is the placebo diet: same
unappetizing flavor, but none of the putative health benefit.]

The relative reduction in risk is always larger than the absolute; it seems
more impressive and so is supposed to be favored by pharmaceutical companies in
their public advertisements and promotional literature. If p0 is
quite small, then the absolute risk is smaller, but the relative risk reduction
can sound pretty good. For example, if a drug reduces the risk from 0.02% to
0.01%, then the absolute risk reduction is 0.01%, but the relative risk
reduction is 50%. As the absolute risk gets small, the value of taking the
drug decreases while the relative risk reduction may remain impressive.
Apparently, the absolute/relative distinction was too often glossed-over. The
NNT was defined to avoid that. It is the reciprocal of the absolute risk
reduction, something like the odds of having a benefit from the drug. In the
example presented, the NNT is 10,000. In other words, one needs to treat
10,000 in order for one treated person to benefit. In ordinary terms, the odds
of benefitting are 9999 to 1. This is something a physician can explain to any
patient.

NNTP

Network News Transfer Protocol.

N number

A partial abbreviation of Number NUMBER, and so, to be brief, a redundant
pleonastic pleonasm redundancy, forming part of many that we occasionally call,
for short, acronym-assisted AAP pleonasms.
Some popular examples:

Chemical element abbreviation for Nobelium, At. No. 102, a transuranide
element and perhaps the most blatant bid for a Nobel prize in the history of
chemistry. As it turned out, the researchers who claimed to have found
element 102 in 1957, on the basis of a ten-minute half life, and who
gave it this name, had not found it (it soon became clear that no 102 isotope
had such a half-life). The next year it was really discovered at Berkeley
by A. Ghiorso, T. Sikkeland, J. R. Walton (not the same Walton as the
Cockroft-Walton Walton), and G. T. Seaborg. When the dust finally settled
in 1967, the Berkeley group graciously recommended that the name originally
given be kept.

A Japanese particle that has roughly the effect of apostrophe-ess in
English: it creates a possessive. Somewhat equivalently, it has the effect
that casting a word into the genitive case has in inflected languages like
German or Latin.

Like Japanese particles generally, it is written using the hiragana
syllabary. Those who study Japanese as a foreign language usually encounter
mnemonics to help them learn the roughly 100 basic kana (hiragana plus
katakana) symbols. Here's a good one for the hiragana no if you already
know Hebrew. (The following paragraph is reproduced as image content below,
which may help if your browser does not display the non-Latin characters
properly.)

The Hebrew word for of is שׁﬥ (transliterated ``shel'').
The first Hebrew letter (on the right, since Hebrew is written
RTL) is shin.
The modern cursive form of shin is
.
The Japanese particle -no does not mean `of' (or shel) exactly.
It means 's, so it follows the possessor and precedes the possession. However,
Japanese is now written left-to-right. If you read it right-to-left, like
Hebrew, a phrase with -no will have the possession-of-possessor order.
So naturally the cursive Hebrew shin should be flipped over to produce
the hiragana no: の

[Interestingly, the word shel has undergone a semantic evolution similar
to that of de (loosely `of') in Latin. In Classical Latin the genitive
case was used for simple possession and attribution, and the use of de
was more restricted. In Vulgar Latin, the case distinctions broke down or went
away, and de came to be used more generally to mark the possessive.
Somewhat similarly, Biblical Hebrew frequently can indicate possession with
suffixes that mean `my, our, your,' etc., whereas Modern Hebrew makes do with
``shel.'']

NO

Not Our[s]. Publishers' abbreviation: Not Our publication. Gives a whole
old meaning to the old feminist line, ``Which part of
no don't you understand?''

There's a Laurel-and-Hardy movie where Ollie rhetorically asks Stan Laurel (the
generally sheepish one) if he knows how to spell ``not.'' Stan spells it out
in response: ``en, oh, ott.''

In Italy, the Laurel-and-Hardy movies were
long-ago dubbed using bad accents (i.e., the accents of Anglophones with
poor ability to pronounce Italian). Even today, the Anglophone accent in
Italian is known as lorelenardi.

Neither Thomas Edison nor Nikola Tesla ever received a Nobel Prize, but
there is a well-known story that at least one of them was consulted privately
by a representative of the Nobel committee (unofficially, of course), and that
one of them refused to accept the prize if he had to share it with the other,
in consequence of which the prize that year went to Dalén. The story is
probably apocryphal, though it's not possible to disprove it altogether.
Many years ago when this was discussed on the Classics List, an official with
the Nobel Committee was consulted and insisted that there was no record of
either Edison or Tesla having been recommended for a prize, but this doesn't
rule out the possibility that they were considered, and consulted, informally.

Here is a relevant, if loose, parallel: during a scientific conference in 1938,
Enrico was approached informally regarding the Nobel in physics for that year
(the story is told Atoms in the
Family). He was told that he was being considered for it. Because he was
an Italian national, and because the Italian government had put in place some
stringent laws on the movement of currency (and given the rules on collecting
the prize within a certain period after the award), there was a question whether
an award at that time might not be inconvenient to the awardee, hence the
consultation. Fermi said it would be okay, and the following November it was
announced that he had won. (The Fermis took the opportunity of the trip to
Sweden to emigrate to the US.)

The 1919 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, in its evidently rather
poorly edited article on the Nobel Prizes (in vol. 20, accessible
as a Google ebook), lists the laureates from 1901 to 1914 in the five
categories. (The ``Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics'' had not yet been
invented.) The only
American to receive the Nobel Prize in physics during that period, as the
listing correctly indicates, was Albert A. Michelson. Following the listing,
there is this paragraph (my comments are in square brackets):

From the list it is seen that six Americans were awarded prizes:
Elihu Root [1912] and
Theodore Roosevelt [1906] for their labors in behalf of peace;
A. Carrel in medicine [1912; listed as French in the preceding list, apparently
correctly, though he did work in the US from 1904 to 1912, and the work for
which he was awarded the Nobel was done at the Rockefeller Institute]; Prof.
Theodore Richard of Harvard University in chemistry [1914]; and
A. A. Michelson [1907],
Thomas A. Edison [nope] and
Nikola Tesla [nope] in physics. [As this is seven names, they presumably meant
to mention Carrel in some oblique way.] No awards were made in 1914-15. In
1916 the prize for literature was awarded to Verner Heidenstam, Sweden. In
1917 the peace prize was awarded the International Red Cross of Geneva. No
1918 prize was awarded. In 1918 Theodore Roosevelt, with the consent of
Congress, distributed his prize among war charities. Consult Mosenthal,
"The Inventor of Dynamite" in the Nineteenth Century (1898);
`Les Prix Nobel' published annually at Stockholm. [Many of the WWI-era
Nobels were awarded in the years immediately following the war.]

Nobel Prize in Literature

According to Nobel secretary Horace Engdahl, quoted in October 2000,
consideration for the prize has ``no geographical or political concerns.''

Oh.

noble

``Noble'' is a qualifier applied to two groups of elements that compound
little, or less than one would expect: the noble gases and the noble metals.

noble gas

An element with no partially-filled shells. To be precise: here a shell is
all of the electronic states with a given principal quantum number n.
The nth shell has 2n2 states, and the noble-gas element in
the pth period has all shells filled up to that with n = p, so
the noble-gas element of the pth period has atomic number
Z = p(p+1)(2p+1)/3. The known ones, with
stable or long-lived isotopes, are

They (mostly Xe) do form a small number of not-very-stable compounds, as well
as some plain unstable compounds called
excimers. Another way that noble-gas atoms can
be bound chemically is in endohedral fullerenes -- fullerenes with nonbonded
chemical species inside. The common notation for a Xe inside the standard
60-carbon fullerene is Xe@C60 (and it's a tight fit;
He@C60 rattles around).

The closed electronic structure makes atoms of these elements chemically very
unreactive -- hence the adjective ``noble''. They
are also commonly called ``inert gases'' and ``rare gases,'' but these terms
are better thought of as descriptions than names. The term ``inert gas'' can
be ambiguous because it (and ``inert atmosphere'') are sometimes applied to
non-oxidizing gases or to gases that are nonreactive in a particular situation
(including nitrogen, carbon dioxide and even hydrogen, depending on context).
The term ``rare gas'' is of questionable accuracy: helium, the lightest noble
gas, is the second-most common element (at least of normal matter) in the
universe, even if it is relatively rare on earth. Argon is 1% of the
atmosphere by volume.

Another consequence of the spherically symmetric and ``rigid'' electronic
structure is that their mutual van der Waals interactions are weak, so they
have very low boiling and melting points (hence ``gases'').

[In fact, 4He does not even have a solid phase at ordinary pressure
for any temperature. It undergoes a transition from a normal liquid state to a
superfluid phase at 4.3 K. The superfluid phase is a sort of macroscopic
equivalent of an atomic ground state: just as quantum mechanically, an atom in
its ground state cannot lose energy even though it has positive kinetic energy,
so the superfluid fraction of helium-4 does not lose energy by fluid friction.
Yes, that's oversimplifying things a bit. For reassuringly normal behavior,
raise the pressure to 26 atmospheres, and helium-4 solidifies just below
1 K.]

The noble gases are the group of elements in the rightmost column of standard
periodic tables: group 8A in the sensible CAS group numbering traditionally
used in the US and 18 in the stupid IUPAC
compromise group numbering adopted in 1985.

noble metal

The noble metals are a variable group, paradigmatically including
gold, that resist oxidation in air at high
temperatures, and resist dissolution (also an oxidation) by strong acids.

Resistance to oxidation arises from multiple causes, but these can be broadly
classed as thermodynamic and kinematic. Thermodynamics determines whether the
oxidation is energetically favorable, kinematics determines how fast a
thermodynamically favored oxidation will occur. Many metals, including gold
and such non-noble metals as the pure metal aluminum and the alloys called
stainless steels, form a thin but dense layer of oxide that prevents further
oxidation. Hence oxidation of the bulk is prevented under conditions where it
might be thermodynamically favorable.

Kinematic factors can depend dramatically on the oxidants and nonmonotonically
on their densities, so they're a bit tricky to quantify. If you want a simple
guide to just how noble an element is, thermodynamics is a better bet. In
particular, I recommend the reduction potential, since I have a list of
reduction potentials of common metals handy:

Reduction Half-Reaction

Standard Reduction Potential (volts)

Au+(aq) + e- --> Au(s)

+1.83

Pt2+(aq) + 2e- --> Pt(s)

+1.19

Ir3+(aq) + 3e- --> Ir(s)

+1.16

Pd2+(aq) + 2e- --> Pd(s)

+0.99

Hg+(aq) + e- --> Hg(s)

+0.80

Ru2+(aq) + 2e- --> Ru(s)

+0.8

Ag+(aq) + e- --> Ag(s)

+0.80

Rh3+(aq) + 3e- --> Rh(s)

+0.76

Cu+(aq) + e- --> Cu(s)

+0.52

Bi3+(aq) + 3e- --> Bi(s)

+0.32

2H+(aq) + 2e- --> H2(g)

+0.00

Pb2+(aq) + 2e- --> Pb(s)

-0.13

Sn2+(aq) + 2e- --> Sn(s)

-0.14

(Many of the metals listed have other oxidation states; I have given the
reduction potentials for half-reaction from the lowest positive oxidation
number.)
Positive reduction potentials essentially correspond to oxidizing agents rather
than reducing agents. Metals with positive reduction potentials do not react
with ordinary acids to yield hydrogen gas. (Sulfuric acid is another story --
it's not just a strong acid but also an oxidizing agent.) Generally, more
positive reduction potentials mean higher resistance to oxidation. Hence, a
reasonable definition of noble metals might be those with reduction potentials
above a particular value.

A better-defined group of elements including gold is its column of elements in
the periodic table, sometimes called the ``coinage metal.''

no-brainer

A choice in which the decision is obvious, and the
obvious decision is sometimes correct.

National Oil Company. Something like Brazil's Petrobras or Saudi Arabia's
Aramco: government-owned or government-controlled petroleum producers. In
other industries, such companies are sometimes known as ``national champions.''
NOC's are distinguished from the multinational ``supermajors'' BP,
ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Total, Shell, and Chevron. In the 1950s, 85 percent of
global reserves were under the control of the big oil companies. Today, 90
percent of the reserves are being exploited by NOCs and the sovereign
governments that own
them.

NoC, NOC

Network On Chip.

NOC

Network Operations Center.

noch

An old Scottish form of nought.

NOCH

National Organization of Catechists among
Hispanics. ``Catechists''? Is that anything like ecdysiasts? Feline
ecdysiasts? ``NOCH has been a leader in the Catholic religious formation for
Hispanics in the United States since 1986. In the light of the Gospel and the
teachings of the Catholic Church, NOCH is committed to the catechetical
ministry for Spanish speakers of all ages.'' Hmmm... ecclesiasts, then.
Sounds close enough.

``Good night'' in Spanish is buenas noches, literally `good nights.' I
have no idea why. ``Good day'' can be done with either number: buen
día or buenos días.

NOCHS

North Ottawa Community Health System.
It's not what (or where) you might think. ``We offer all the traditional
hospital services as well as a variety of outpatient services, comprehensive
home care, clinics and educational programs. Our technology and convenient
location provide quality medical care to residents of the West Michigan
Tri-Cities and surrounding areas.'' It's based in Grand Haven, Michigan.

no comment

A self-contradictory remark. The logical difficulty with this comment is
similar to that identified in ``Free Will,'' a Rush song: ``If you choose not
to decide, you still have made a choice.'' It's a pretty stale observation
(about ``no comment''), though perhaps not as stale as the comment itself.
What the world seems to need is a few relatively novel ways of no-commenting.
Someone somewhere ought to try just pursing his lips. (You know how to
whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.) At
the off the record entry (which is on the
record and published in this glossary), we examine recursive comment-masking
mechanisms.

If making no comment by not commenting is too difficult for one's spokesman,
perhaps the solution is to have no spokesman (spokesperson? spoker?) at all.
As of 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton has a number of spokers. One is her Senate
spokesman, Philippe Reines. Commenting in May on two new biographies of
Clinton, Reines asked ``Is it possible to be quoted yawning?''
(``Aw-oouahhh''?)

In Joseph Heller's Good As Gold, the hero electrifies (it's a metaphor,
okay?) a White House flack by coining the
original phrase ``I don't know.'' Later, a presidential spokesman deploys this
work of rhetorical art during a press conference, and everyone is stunned. I'm
working from memory here, so some details may be off.//

NOtification
and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation ACT. (It's
anti-retaliation as well.)
Signed into (US) law on May 15, 2002. Laws already existed to protect
government employees, former employees, and job applicants from discrimination
and from retaliation for whistle-blowing. [The term ``whistle-blowing'' is used
loosely in this context. One case brought
to light in hearings on the bill involved an EPA
scientist who was punished for a memorandum she had written over ten years
earlier and which had eventually, without her knowledge, been given to the
House Science Committee (which of course had a perfect right to it).] Existing
laws already imposed
rules on government agencies' dealings with their employees (and former
employees, etc.) and provided for compensation to whistle-blowers when those
rules are violated. What the No FEAR Act does is intended to do is increase
agencies' ``accountability'' in two ways: (1) most noticeably through
``notification'' -- agencies are required to publish quarterly reports relating
to their compliance with anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation laws, and (2)
most stingingly through the ``reimbursement'' clauses: any monetary settlements
won by plaintiffs under these laws are taken out of the budgets of those
agencies.

NOrth HOllywood. Also NOrthHamptOn -- at least the one in Massachusetts.
I didn't make this up myself.

NOHVCC

National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation
Council. ``NOHVCC, as a national body of OHV
recreation enthusiasts, develops and provides a wide spectrum of programs,
materials and information, or `tools,' to individuals, clubs, associations and
agencies in order to further a positive future for responsible OHV
recreation.''

NOI

Nation of Islam.

NOI

Notice Of Intent.

There used to be an advertising campaign for a cigar: a heart attack waiting
to happen -- a sedentary suit, unconcerned by his
BMI, planted on a plush leather chair -- would
issue the stirring ad slogan: ``We're gonna getcha.'' He meant that you
couldn't resist becoming a White Castle cigar smoker. As if their
tobacco were addictive or something. Hah! Usually, when somebody smiles
confidently and says that ``we're gonna getcha,'' it's not a friendly smile.
The we refers to less retiring persons who have been delegated the task
of ``getting you,'' possibly with some discretion as to how they instantiate
or ``concretize'' the relatively vague thr-- er, promise.

Back when I worked at Arizona State University
(ASU), one of our Japanese post-docs, Nobu, took a
short vacation in Mexico and returned with a dusty, impressively old-looking
tome. He explained gleefully that the vendor had sold it to him cheap because
it was old. Nobu didn't happen to know Spanish, so he asked me to read some
and tell him what the book was about. I found it difficult to understand, like
medieval Catalan or... something. As you can guess from the entry in which
you're reading this story, it was actually Italian. However, since I had this
idea fija (`idée fixe' in English) that it was just ``really
weird Spanish,'' the nickel didn't drop for a
minute or so. We went to Rita (a grad student from Sardinia), who confirmed
that it was (fairly modern) Italian. I don't remember what the book was about.

A somewhat related story about Enrico Fermi and his sister and a physics book
is retold by Laura Fermi in her biography of her husband Enrico,
Atoms in the Family. I'll
try to put that in here later.

I was reading an Italian mystery last year (I picked up a bit of Italian since
my time at ASU) and having trouble with one longish and idiom-laden sentence.
Then, as I walked through the library not far from a small group talking in
polite library tones, I distinctly heard one of them say noi -- a word
that, afaik, doesn't occur in any western Romance language other than Italian.
I rushed back to where I was sitting and got the book. I approached them and
asked (in English) for help. They said they'd try, but soon admitted defeat.
When I tried to discuss the problematic text with them, it turned out they
didn't know Italian... We continued the discussion in Spanish. I wanted to
know ``¿¡qué palabra es `noy'!?'' It turned out that what I
had heard (which would be written ``noy'' in Spanish) was a slurring of ``no
oí,'' Spanish for `I didn't hear.' Precisely.

I suppose that as they had been speaking in somewhat hushed tones, it was
natural that one of them should have said it, and said it a bit louder than
usual. That's my excuse. For a related story involving Nobu and no and n',
see the nimporta entry.

noise

In communications, there's a technical distinction between noise and
interference. Interference is deviation from desired signal that is
caused by influence between two communication channels in the same
(e.g., crosstalk between two phone
lines) or different communication systems. Noise is deviation caused by
sources external to communication systems (e.g., lightning).

One way of saying `Don't stop!' in Latin.
Somebody emailed to ask, so I figured others would want to know. On the other
hand, I figured you wouldn't want to know so badly that I should put in an
entry under the translated head term. I mean, you're bound to get around to it
eventually if you don't stop reading the
glossary. Oh, I'm a riot, I know.

Some of you more inquisitive readers are probably wondering why this
particular phrase. It doesn't look like a take-home exam problem.
I was not vouchsafed this information. I provided the Latin translation on
a don't-ask-don't-tell basis. Furthermore, the resemblance of the Latin verb
sistere and the English word sister is purely coincidental, and
does not reflect any special message tailoring on anyone's part.

Hmm -- I can see that some of you more inquisitive types just won't give up.
You want to know ``well then, what was the sex of your email correspondent''?
Look, you must realize that if I start giving out detailed information like
that you'll be able to guess the identity of the person who made the query.
Then, given your filthy imagination, you will probably go and destroy this
probably-innocent coed's reputation. Therefore I vow to tell you nothing about
my correspondent unless you drag it out of me.

It's important to know that there's a singular-plural distinction even in the
imperative. If she had been commanding more than one person to not stop, she
would want to say Nolite sistere! I provided this information just in
case (JIC). Things have been known to get kinky at
that school.

BTW, there are other verbs that translate `stop,'
and slightly milder ways of expressing an imperative (specifically, by using
the ``jussive'' sense of the subjunctive; `may you not stop').

A pseudonym used in cyberspace. The term is jocularly modeled on the old
French tag nom de plume. (That means
`pen name'; see the penknife entry for more.)

nom de internet

A pseudonym used on the Internet. The term is jocularly modeled on the old
French tag nom de plume, and appears,
sadly in my opinion, to be more common than nom
de cyber. I mean, if you're going to be barbarously absurd, do it with a
panache.

nom d'internet

A pseudonym used on the Internet. The term is jocularly modeled on the old
French tag nom de plume. It's less
barbarous than nom de internet, so I'm
pleased that it's less common too.

nom d'ordinateur

A French term meaning `computer name.' It
seems to occur (in French) primarily as a reference to the name of a computer,
and not to a name one uses with a computer (username or pseudonym or such).
Cf.nom de cyber.

Nomenclature is destiny

I first encountered this idea in Roger Price: ``The Roger Price Theory of
Nomenclature,'' The Bedside Playboy, pp. 286-293. The Bedside
Playboy, incidentally, was edited by Hugh M. Hefner -- evidently an
extraordinary man: bon vivant, businessman, editor, philosopher, publisher,
restauranteur, and roué. This volume of selections from his illustrated
literary journal was published by, of course, HMH
Publishing Co, Inc., in 1963 (see also V.I.P.),
when the prevalent Weltanschauung still had a conceptual niche that could be
filled by a word like ribald. Roger Price also made lasting
contributions to civilization. He and Leonard Stern created Mad Libs,
mentioned at this ad lib entry.

In his nomenclature essay, Price was concerned with the direct psychosocial
consequences of certain names; how these exert an irresistible force on one's
fate. For example: ``Cora has good posture and a severe hairdo.'' He
notes that, as a 1920's Roger, he had been destined to a life of
near-sighted studiousness and giving the class oration at high school
commencement. (In clear confirmation of his prediction, these things had in
fact already come to pass. My own research has determined that Norberts
are at high risk of becoming
dix-huitièmistes. See also our
advisory on Virginia at the NJCA entry.)
Price failed to adduce another strong piece of evidence for his hypothesis: the
well-known cases of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Woodrow Wilson, and Werner Erhard (the
est guy), who changed their names and their lives.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. (A bit more on Woody and Werner at the
electrical banana entry. BTW,
Mad Libs came
into the world as Roger Price was in the kitchen carving a banana. Bananas have the highest humor content of any
tropical fruit.)

The meanings Price was concerned with had little to do with the
original meanings of the names -- their etymologies. If you want to
know about given-name etymologies, the site to visit is Behind the Name. See also IncompeTech's NameDB.

Not really appropriate to this entry, but I don't have another place to list
them right now, are The Funny Name
Server and Name of the Month.
See also the Kabalarian Philosophy Home
Page (``Teaching the Principles of Mental Freedom''). The Kabalarian
Philosophy is similar to the idea of this entry, but they seem to be in dead
earnest, so I concede they might be a lot funnier. On the other hand, we are
informative.

This glossary entry is concerned with names that have an evident meaning,
whether that is the same as the original meaning or not, where those names have
operated magically, molding their bearers so that the names would come to be
ironic commentary.

One way or another, the idea that the meaning of a name affects its bearer
has a classical provenance:

A daring firefighting
specialist. The nickname ``Red'' he had from childhood, for the fiery
color of his hair, before he started wearing his trademark red
overalls. He was the most famous pioneer in capping oil-well fires and
blowouts, both on land and off shore. Oil-well fires are noisy, and he
became noticeably hard-of-hearing. He earned the nickname
``Hellfighter'' for his exploits. In 1968, a movie called ``Hellfighters'' was made
starring John Wayne as ``Chance Buckman,'' the red-overalled Adair
character. Red Adair was a technical advisor for the film, along with
a `Boots' Hansen and a `Coots' Matthews who also have no other movie
credits.

Brad ADGATE

A senior vice president at Horizon Media, a company that buys ads.
He was named Advertising Age 2002 Media Maven, and in 2005 he
was ranked the #3 most quoted executive in Advertising Age's annual
'Media Talk' listing.

The surname is a Latin word meaning `farmer.' The subject of this
subentry was a German physician who wrote several works on mineralogy
and metallurgy. You might ask, ``how is this any more noteworthy than
a German physician who wrote several works on mineralogy and metallurgy
and was named Georg Landwirt [`George Farmer']?'' It's more noteworthy
because it's not common for Germans to have Latin surnames. When
medieval and early modern Germans have been known by Latin names that
are not essentially their German names translated, then one could
expect the name to be chosen to make some point (e.g.:
Paracelsus). The point here, if there was one, seems wildly
off-target.

Agricola's most famous work, De Re Metallica, was published in
1556, when he was already sleeping with the minerals. Yes, that was a
lame joke. We know -- we're experts at that sort of thing. We only
included it here because we want to expose you to every kind of humor
(diverse humor includes differently-abled humor, ha, ha). Otherwise,
we'd have written that it wasn't about the rock group. That
would have had you ROTFL, because it puns
both on Metallica and rock group. (It would have.
It hasn't because of the timing. We know. Another thing about timing:
Georg Agricola was a near contemporary of Paracelsus, another physician. Paracelsus was
the first great champion of medicinal chemistry. The novelty of
Paracelsus's idea might be inferred from the fact that Agricola, a
physician interested in chemical processes (in mining and metallurgy)
wrote little or nothing about medicinal chemistry. Then again,
Agricola wrote only what he knew; Paracelsus went beyond what he knew
and so was able to say a great deal (pretty much all of it nonsense,
alas).

Oh wait -- his name was German: Georg Bauer.
(Bauer meant `peasant'; in Latin translation he gave himself a
free upgrade.) So his books were actually by Georgius Agricola
-- the mixed German and Latin is sloppy and misleading. Hmmph. Oh
well.

De Re Metallica was Englished by Herbert Clark Hoover (an
engineer who became famous as organizer of relief efforts in Europe
after WWI and later became president of the
US) in collaboration with his wife Lou Henry Hoover. (And look, if a
girl gets Henry as her surname, how much sense does it require to avoid
giving her a name like Lou as well? People surnamed Henry should be
able to see this coming and make appropriate preparations.) The
Hoovers also collaborated on an English translation of the De
Architectura of Vitruvius Pollio.

There's a
Georg-Agricola-Gesellschaft, e.V.
(founded in 1926), but it's not primarily about him. It's ``zur
Förderung der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der
Technik'' (`for the advancement of the history of the natural
sciences and technology').

Erin ALLDAY

Under her byline, the San Francisco Chronicle published an
article on Americans not getting enough sleep (``Waking up grumpy is
Zzz factor,'' November 8, 2007).

A borough in Warren County, New Jersey. It's the
first municipality you notice upon entering the state (on
I-78 from
Pennsylvania). Okay, it's not actually the first one you pass through.
Harry Zikas, Jr., was elected
mayor there in 1999, at 21 the youngest mayor in New Jersey. After
his reelection in 2003, he said ``I will ALWAYS keep Alpha priority one
....'' (I know it doesn't look promising now, but I swear to you that
this is a very exciting subentry.)

Alpha was founded because of the high quality and quantity of limestone deposits found there. The
limestone attracted the cement industry, which flourished in the early
part of the twentieth century. Alpha was incorporated in 1911 and is
named after the Alpha Portland Cement Company.

I should probably clarify the ``first municipality you notice'' thing.
It has to do with geometry, but the details will have to wait until the
next time I'm east-bound in that area. I really want to clear this
priority thing up and find out which is the real alpha town, but all I
can tell you now is what I witnessed the last time I left New Jersey on
I-78. Near the 3.8 mile marker, there's a sign announcing that you're
entering the township of Hopatcong. Then, just 0.4 miles later:
``Entering the Boro of Alpha.'' But wait-- at the 2.8 MM, ``Entering the Twp. of Hopatcong.'' I
didn't realize I'd left. But Alpha comes roaring back! Again after
just 0.4 miles: entering Alpha. Things
quiet down. At 1.8 miles, no Hopatcong riposte, 1.4 miles, 1 mile,
looks like Alpha is going to take it to the finish line. But wait! At
0.8 miles -- Hopatcong! The tension mounts! Help me, Dashboard Jesus,
I can hardly steer! At 0.6 miles, 0.5 miles, Alpha is silent. It's
0.4 miles, still haven't seen a sign, 0.3 .... The bridge is coming
into view, still no new entering sign. Is this it? Just before the
bridge -- I see a sign! A SIGN! Hang on tight -- it's gonna be a
cliffhanger! At 0.1 miles, just feet from the shore, I see --
``Entering... the town of Phillipsburg''! Gasp! It's over! It's alll
over!! Oh my heart! Omigod! Ohh--mega!

(For those of you who sincerely care: I-78 bypasses Alpha in a
semicircle around the south. It avoids the residential streets but
goes through a couple of arms of the roughly star-shaped incorporated
area.)

An American football player. He was a highly recruited high school
player out of McDonough, Georgia. When he arrived at USC in 2010, he
was the #3-rated receiver in the country. He played in the first four
games for the Trojans as a true freshman, but was declared academically
ineligible for the rest of the season (or, in case it's not the same,
was suspended for academic reasons, according to other reports). How
do you get into academic trouble just one month into your freshman
year? ``Maturity issues,'' they say. He left USC either voluntarily
or ``voluntarily'' in November but returned in January. He was
punished and almost kicked off the team in April for being a
no-call-no-show. In August he was declared academically ineligible to
play in the 2011 season and he soon left USC for good.

Not editorializing or anything, but this whole student-athlete charade
is unfair. No one asked Einstein to run a minimum 5-second 40, did
they? So this guy is a wide-receiving genius -- why should he have to
stay awake through a bunch of boring lectures just to play farm-team
football for scraps and peanuts, under the tyranny of well-compensated
coaches (guys who lacked the skills to earn a hyper-rich retirement in
their playing years)?

Anyway, Ambles meandered around the no-TV-coverage backwaters of
college football for a while (places -- like Arizona Western Community
College -- that are so little-known they might be fictitious) before
reemerging in 2013. In April it was announced that he had signed with
the Houston Cougars, to arrive on campus (there isn't much irony
content in this entry; all this detail is just due diligence and
digging for ironic dirt) in the summer, able to play immediately and
with two years of eligibility remaining. The Cougars play in the Big
East, and Ambles, teamed with WR Deontay Greenberry, should give them
one of the best receiving groups in that conference.

Scott AMEDURE

Amatore, Amadori, etc., now used as surnames, are versions of a
common given name borne by various medieval saints, many of them
martyrs. The original given name was the
LatinAmator, meaning `lover,'
implicitly of God. Scott Amedure suffered and died for a different
kind of love.

Jonathan T. Schmitz, a waiter in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, agreed in
1995 to appear on the Jenny Jones talk show, where he was told that he
would learn the identity of a secret admirer. When the show was taped
in Chicago on Monday, March 6, he learned that his acquaintance Amedure
was the secret admirer. According to Jim Paratore, president of
Telepictures Productions (which produced the show), ``We observed
nothing confrontational or any signs of embarrassment between any of
the guests before, during or after the taping.''

On account of adverse publicity or whatever, that show was never aired,
but it was screened by the jury in Schmitz's trial for the murder of
Amedure the next year. During the show, Amedure outlined his sexual
fantasies about Schmitz, which involved ``whipped cream and champagne''
and focused on
Schmitz's ``cute, little hard body.'' All members of the jury agreed
that they observed signs of embarrassment. (Schmitz was found guilty
of second degree murder and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. The
conviction was overturned on appeal, and confirmed in a second trial,
where the original sentence was reinstated.)

Schmitz said later that he thought he had handled the situation well
and was putting it behind him. The following Thursday morning,
however, Schmitz found a note attached to his apartment door. The note
``contained sexual references,'' as they say. (That makes me think of
C++, but I'm pretty perverted.) In reaction,
Schmitz bought a 12-gauge shotgun and five rounds of ammunition, and
drove to Amedure's Orion Township, Michigan, mobile home. There he
confirmed that Amedure had written the note and then shot him twice in
the chest, allegedly. I like to add ``allegedly'' because it shows
that I'm being careful to cover my ass. Don't want to be provocative.

If he had gone into track and field, he would have been a natural
for the javelin throw. Instead, he went into bike racing and had some
success, taking the Tour de France (sounds
like a touristy thing) a few times (seven, a broken record). Oops,
scratch that: he won it zero times. In mid-career, he got testicular
cancer but beat that too. Now he's the poster boy for more comfortable
bicycle seats.

Interestingly, there's another, unrelated guy with the same name --
Lance Armstrong -- who also races or raced for the
USPS team, though not as successfully. He
would get regular autograph requests. (You wouldn't think it'd be a
likely mistake for fans to make, since he's a black man and the famous
Lance Armstrong is a blonde, but I guess the name is everything. Or
maybe we've finally achieved the true ``color-blind'' society!)
Knowing the post office, they probably get each others' mail as well.
Evidently there's something about the name that predisposes one to bike
race for the post office.

A police officer who left his job as a result of sexual misconduct.
In Mid-November 2009, he and fellow officer Adam Fisher (I'm still
thinking about this name) resigned from the Glendale, Ariz., police
force after Police Chief Steve Conrad notified them that he planned to
fire them. Fisher and Shannon Godina, a police records employee, had
been conducting an affair, and Fisher would visit Godina's house when
he was supposed to be on patrol. An investigation into this found that
Fisher and Arreola were doctoring time sheets and sending ``sexually
and racially offensive'' messages to other officers in Glendale. The
actual messages were not quoted, but we can take the quoted description
at face value, since nowadays there's always someone eager to be
offended by anything, you pervert.

Before the officers resigned, Godina had confessed to having had sex
with Fisher ``on the clock'' (kinky!) three to five times in 2008 and
was fired, possibly without the option of resigning instead. In her
confession, she also volunteered that she wanted to leave her post at
the records office to become a police officer. Now that she's out of
the records office, it would be harder for her to change her own
employment records (not to mention time sheets), and her termination
from this job might be a problem if she does try to become a police
officer somewhere. Maybe she should change her name, or at least its
termination. I suggest changing -ina to -iva.

No wait: according to a
news report,
``Police say Godina confessed to having sex with Fisher because she
wanted to leave the records office and become a police officer.'' Now
I get it: she really didn't have the opportunity to resign, so she had
to get herself fired. She should sue the police department for
violating her thirteenth-amendment rights.

Darius was the name of a couple of important Persian emperors, and
Darius A. Arya is the name of an American archaeologist. Well, I guess
Darius (like Cyrus) is still a common enough given name in Iran.

There's a Swedish surname Asplund, with the meaning `aspen
grove.' I don't know where the extra h came from, but Carl Hjalmar
Asplundh came from Sweden in 1882 and worked as an accountant in
Philadelphia. After he died in 1903, Carl's second son Oswald took up
work as gardener and later founded a landscaping and tree surgery
business, employing his three younger brothers as tree trimmers as they
worked their way through college. Those brothers, Griffith, Lester,
and Carl Hjalmar (junior) founded the
Asplundh Tree Expert Co. in 1928.
This history is cribbed from that company's website's history page. According
to itself, in 2006 ``Asplundh is the world's leading vegetation
management company, with over 28,000 employees serving utilities and
municipalities in the United States, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand.''

And on the subject of surprising final aitches, don't forget Jean
Anouilh.

This is the name of an unexpectedly aptly named song on Ashlee
Simpson's debut album. But before we get into that, I want to point
out that Ashlee is an artist, a musician, a creator (creatrix?). As a
mere indication of both her musical acumen and ability, here is an
unsparing and perceptive self-critique that she allowed to be
published. About burping the alphabet, she commented ``[m]y worst
letter is S. It is a closed consonant and
at the end when I am out of wind.'' But she's also fair: ``... my
favorite letter is G. It is an open consonant and it is at the
beginning when my wind is strong.'' Modestly, she concedes that her
older sister ``Jessica burps the alphabet better
than me. She has better wind and she is a
much louder belcher.'' (Thanks, sis.) Maybe Ashlee should discuss
this with her singing coach. I hear that if you control your voice
just so, you can conserve your wind so as to make it through a longer
piece. Then again, maybe a natural singing talent doesn't have to
worry about that breathing stuff.

Well, I guess I'll tell you more about it later. Right now I feel a
sore throat coming on.

The image at right shows Shelley Long and Harry Baals on the set of the
NBC show ``Cheers'' in 1984. Shelley Long
is the one to the left. Hmmm. I think maybe the guy with her is
actually the actor Ted
Danson. I guess I don't have a picture of Harry Baals. I can't
honestly say that bothers me very much.

December 2, 2001: I just checked on Google: the ``Brittany Speers'' thing
hasn't worked so well -- this page only ranked thirteenth out of ``about
193'' (most of those unintentional mispellings). I'm going to type it
in a third time now and see what happens: Brittany Speers.
Oh yes: nekkid.

It's obvious that you just can't get enough of this stuff. Go see the
Alana Miles entry.

April 14, 2002: We're up to third of ``about 706.'' YES! (Google is trying
hard to help steer people to pages with the name spelled properly,
but we know you're looking for us.) And we'll also try to get you
with brittany spears.

As the AP had it, ``Jolee Bacon
really sizzles when it comes to hog-calling.'' This was the lead in an
item datelined Sept. 22, 2008, Lewiston, Idaho. On Saturday the 20th,
she had taken first place in the hog-calling competition at the Nez
Perce County Fair. The Northern Idaho woman has raised several
champion hogs for 4-H contests. She won over the crowd as she started
her call with ``a few loud snorts and a long, drawn-out `sooey'.''

Harvey R. Ball (July 10, 1921 - April 12, 2001), an ad executive,
was the person with the strongest claim to having invented the smiley
face -- the simple, circular yellow face with an ear-to-ear grin
and no ears ().

In 1959, Mr. Ball founded an advertising and PR agency in Worcester, Massachusetts. In
1963, one of his clients, State Mutual Life Assurance Company of
America, asked him to help with the reassurance of workers in the wake
of a merger. According to Ball's claim, corroborated by issues of the
Worcester Times & Gazette of that time, and by State Mutual Life
company records, that was the beginning of the smiley face. It stands
to reason: the meaningless smiley originated as a meaningless feel-good
PR gesture substituting for a substantive assurance of continued work
or placement and transition help? Oh well. State Mutual Life is now
Allmerica Financial Corporation. Ball recalled that he was paid $45
for his artwork and never applied for a trademark or copyright. At least he wasn't
fined.

According to the AP, the smiley's
popularity peaked in 1971, when fifty million smiley buttons were sold. In 1999, the USPS issued a smiley-face
stamp. Who says there isn't a distinctive American culture?

In 1989, Charlie Alzamora stepped forward to dispute Ball's claim of
priority. You wouldn't think, by that time, it would be anything that
anyone outside the post office would want to claim credit for.
Alzamora, by then program director for New York radio station WMCA (AM 570; I don't think it had
religious programming in those days), told the New York Times that a happy face with a
slightly crooked smile was developed by the station in 1962 as a
promotion for its DJ's. The face, with the slogan ``the WMCA good
guys,'' was printed on
thousands of sweatshirts distributed by the station.

They say that success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.
This must be an exceptional case.

Lacey BANGHARD

A page 3 girl. It's about the hair. Yeah, that's it.

Joseph ``Jose'' BANKS

When Banks was arrested on September 4, 2008, the FBI described him
as one of the most prolific bank robbers in Chicago history, accusing
him of holding up at least 20 banks.

PEGGY BANKS

Well, you may have a little money in a piggy bank, and you may add
to it, but you're supposed to wait before you get it out.
Margaret-Eleanora Banks, known as Peggy, was 22 in 1745, an orphan
living with her brother. At the time, she and Harry Grenville already
planned to marry, but her fortune was a mere 5000 pounds. They didn't
marry until 1757, by which time her sister had died unmarried, doubling
Peggy's fortune by the terms of their father's will. (Harry Grenville,
as governour of Barbados, had also improved his own circumstances.)

A town of 25,000 an 85-mile drive east on I-10 from downtown Los Angeles. (Pass Ontario,
CA, along the way.)
In December, 2002, a lesbian student at Coombs Middle School there sued
the Banning Unified School District. She had been banned from gym class
for over a week because administrators felt that other girls would be
uncomfortable getting undressed in front of her. The plaintiff, 14 at
the time of the incident, is being represented by lawyers of the ACLU and the NCLR. She claims that she felt ``humiliated
and denigrated.'' Is it okay to use that word again?

In an interview with Reuters, she explained that ``It's fine if
they're uncomfortable but it's still discrimination.'' But apparently
it's not fine if she's uncomfortable.

Host of the TV shows ``Truth or Consequences'' for 18 years and
``The Price is Right'' for 30 years. I'd like to say that that makes
him something like a carnival barker, but his role was not so
full-throated. So that's not the excuse for this entry.

He's a vegetarian and very active animal-rights advocate. He co-hosted
the 1986 PATSY awards with a dog named Mike.

Son of Serafín Baroja. The given name Pío is
the Spanish form of the Latin name Pius (meaning `pious'). The surname
Baroja is not likely to be related to Baroque (barroco in
Spanish). It does, however, suggest Hebrew vocabulary related to
piety. Words with the same consonants in Hebrew (b,r,kh) are various
conjugations of `bless' and related words. (For example, the noun for
benediction, transliterated into Spanish, is barajá. A
common boys' given name in Hebrew is Baruch, `blessed.' )
Actually, baraja is a Spanish word also: barajar is `to
fight, stir [as a pot], mix [especially cards -- i.e. shuffle].'
The origin or the word is unknown.
See also baraka.

When you consider the position of the hands, barajar naipes
(`to shuffle cards') resembles Christian prayer. Maybe the Spanish
word comes from the Arab-speaking Muslim world, as playing cards
themselves did. (Okay,
Corominas y Pascual reject
an Arabic origin, which proves that if barajar has an Arabic
origin, they're wrong.) Arabic, another Semitic language, has a
cognate of the Hebrew root. The same Arabic word was adopted into
Swahili, a Bantu language of coastal East Africa. Although Swahili is
the native language of only a minority of Bantu-speakers, it is widely
used as a commercial lingua franca. US President Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan, and his first
name means `blessed.'

It's plausible to speculate that Baroja is a ``New Christian'' name --
i.e., a surname of (Roman Catholic) Spaniards descended from
converted Jews. It is much more probable that the name is simply
derived from the place name Baroja (annexed to the municipality of
Peñacerrada in the province of Álava). The name of
Álava is derived from Basque and means `intermountain region.'
Interestingly, however, Álava is a homophone of alaba (`[he]
praises') except that the stress in the latter word is on the penult.
Serafín Baroja, a mining engineer (born 1840 in San
Sebastián), was a writer of popular cantos in Basque
(lyrics that various others later set to music). I don't have to tell
you what Serafín means and that it's derived from Hebrew,
do I? Good.

Pío, also born in San Sebastián (Dec. 28, 1872), like his
father had a practical profession but is remembered for his artistic
work (novels and literary essays, mostly). He became a physician and
practiced for two years in Cestona, but that life was too dull and he
moved to Madrid. There he tried his hand at various businesses, and
successfully established a bakery with his brother Ricardo (a painter
and self-taught engraver). You don't need to know this, but then you
don't need not to know it either. All you really need to know
you learned in kindergarten, so stop reading and get back to work.

The first sentence of his Memorias is

Yo no tengo la costumbre de mentir.

(`I am not in the habit of lying.') This may suggest to sensitive
persons like me that he was an unselfaware scold. Referring in the
memoir to the publication of El Árbol de la Ciencia
in 1911, he noted that he put in it his concerns as a physician and as
an amateur philosopher. He adds that this novel ``es el libro
más acabado y completo de todos los míos, escrito en el
tiempo que yo estaba en el máximo de energía
intelectual.'' (That `it is the most finished and complete of all
my books, written at the peak of my intellectual energies.')

The title El Árbol de la Ciencia is an obvious allusion
to the Biblical ``tree of the knowledge of good and evil,'' so right
there you've got your nomen-est-omen money's worth. (The title
is the traditional, now archaic, expression of `The Tree of Knowledge.'
See árbol entry for
details.) The novel follows one Andrés Hurtado. Hurtado
sounds like it ought to be related to huerto, `garden' (<
Latinhortus), and therefore stand as
another reference to the Garden of Eden. Then again, maybe not.
Hurtado is a common surname in the Spanish-speaking world, so
common that one never thinks of its meaning: `stolen' or `hidden.'
Hanks and Hodges suggest that
``the reference was probably to an illegitimate offspring, whose
existence was concealed, or to a kidnapped child. (Portuguese has the
equivalent surname Furtado. Both surnames are the past
participle of a verb -- hurtar, furtar -- ultimately derived
from the Latin fur, `thief.')

Let's take a closer look at that novel, then (and let's call it
Tree, which rhymes with brevity). The book follows
Hurtado from the beginning of his medical education (hey -- write what
you know). Paragraph three is this sentence:

[`By one of these classic anomalies of Spain, those students waiting in
the courtyard of the Architecture School were not architects to be, but
rather future physicians and pharmacists.']

It turns out that the general chemistry class for first-year students
in medicine and pharmacy was taught in an old converted chapel, and
that the entrance to that was via the Architecture courtyard. I
mention this not because it is interesting in itself, but because it is
not interesting in itself. It's not unusual in any large educational
institution for classroom space to be taken where it can be found; to
find in this some indication of Spanish singularity suggests a limited
experience. It's too bad, because the novel fairly bursts with broad
assertions about national and regional character which I wish I could
pass along in good conscience. Instead, I shall have to pass them
along with a bad conscience.

Yes, I will finish this entry, honest. Where did I put the book???!!

I found the book! Maybe later I'll use it.

Baroja is considered an important influence on Ernest Hemingway and on John Dos Passos. Hemingway is said to have
adopted the ``spare realism'' of Baroja. This sort of thing is always
relative. Cervantes was celebrated in part for his unwordy style.
Look, not to take anything away from Cervantes or even Baroja, but
Spanish as ordinarily spoken and written is often verbose and
embellished and wordy. Any competent writer of any century who wants
to maintain his readers' interest must write more tersely than average.

As a high school athlete in Clovis, New Mexico, he lettered in
football and track as well as basketball. And at the 2000 state track
meet in Albuquerque set the state record of 7 feet in the high jump.
Nevertheless, he pursued a career in football. He was hired by the
Minnesota Vikings in 2006 and as of 2009 has played for the
Philadelphia Eagles and the Indianapolis Colts.

Michael BEER

Author of Taste or Taboo: Dietary Choices in Antiquity
(2009).

Peter BEERING

Security coordinator for the 2002 Indianapolis 500. Spectators may
bring coolers no larger than 14 inches wide and 14 inches high. If
there's no length restriction, that could pack enough beer. You can
also bring a ``small backpack.''

Charlotte BEERS

She's a CEO of Ogilvy and Mather. (That's neither here nor there;
it's in Chicago, and it's ``an international advertising, marketing and
public relations agency.'')

Beers has been quoted as saying that ``I had my first kiss while I
had a bottle of Coke in my hand. Coca-Cola isn't about taste; it's
about my life.'' Take it from an ad executive, I guess.

Wallace BEERY

He was born Wallace Fitzgerald Beery, and used his real name as an
actor. He won an Oscar for the eponymous lead role in a boxing movie
entitled ``The Champ'' (1931). To capitalize on that success, MGM
starred him in a movie with the unfortunately suggestive title of
``Flesh'' (1932). Implausibly, a movie poster describes him as a
svelte ``200 lbs. of flesh and muscle.'' I guess the stipulation means
that they're not counting the gut. The movie was directed by the
great John Ford, who refused to take directing credit or whatever.
It's a movie about the great Polokai, king of the beer-hall wrestlers.
He's also a novelty or gimmick of a waiter: he carries a beer barrel
to your table to fill your mug. Read more here.
In a still from the movie that you can see
here, Polokai (Beery) drinks from a mug about as wide as his own
mug and almost as long as his upper arm.

Alexander Graham BELL

When I was a kid, I thought it was called ``Bell Telephone''
because a bell rang when there was a call.

Bi- is a Latin prefix for `two,'
and jani is the nominative plural form of janus.
Janus was the name of an old Italian
deity with two faces on opposite sides of one head.

In Farsi, Ladan means nasturtium and Laleh means tulip. Ladan and
Laleh were twin sisters born in Tehran on Jan. 17, 1974, conjoined at
the head (two brains, joined skulls). They made headlines (sorry about
that) around the world when they underwent an operation to become
separate.

They took their gamble at the Raffles Hospital in Singapore. The
operation began at 10 AM Sunday, July 6, 2003, with one team removing a
vein from Ladan's thigh and another spending a reported six hours to
saw through the skull. The vein was needed for grafting into Ladan's
brain; conjoined, the twins shared one vein). On Monday evening, 32
hours into the operation, the grafted vein had blocked. This was not
immediately fatal -- presumably because their circulatory systems were
still joined and apparently because there were a number of collateral
blood vessels. It was decided to continue the operation, and around
noon on Tuesday they were separated and placed on separate operating
tables. Then blood vessels in the bases of both of their brains burst,
and despite strenuous efforts both died -- Ladan after 2 hours and
Laleh 90 minutes later.

The preceding paragraph is the most coherent account of the operation
that I was able to reconstruct from a review of press accounts at the
time. There were a number of conflicting and even incomprehensible
reports at the time, which I'll try to sort out later.

In a July 10 Op-Ed for the New York
Times William Safire wrote: ``In the 19th century, Chang and Eng
had no such choice, and lived out their lives as sideshow curiosities,
often called monstrosities, though they managed to father 22 children.
[SBF: I guess they spent a lot of time in bed.]
In our time, two famed Iranian sisters, ...29-year-old law school
graduates whose brains were linked in the womb... found a hospital in
Singapore and a score of neurosurgeons willing to carry out [their]
decision to risk their lives for physical independence.''

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing about the French monarchy, observed that
when a regime tries to reform itself, it can trigger a revolution by
kindling hope in those who had despaired: ``Patiently endured so long
as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable
once the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds.'' The French
revolution was also known for the separation of heads, by a procedure
invented by one Doctor Joseph Ignace Guillotin.

In French, billet doux means
`love letter.' I was tempted to suppose that the surname was adopted
(or imposed, like
Faux-Pas-Bidet), but so far as I
can tell Billetdoux got his name from his parents in the usual way. [I
might mention that François is the Old French form of the
word français, `French,' but this is not exactly unusual.
I can't think of any place for which a remotely similar naming
phenomenon is common. Okay: Brittany (a part of France!), Norman (via
France), Israel, and Judith (essentially the female form of Judean).]

According to the 2005 Encyclopedia
Britannica, Billetdoux was a ``French playwright whose works,
linked with the avant-garde theatre, examined human relationships and
found them doomed to failure.'' Love it.

His daughter Raphaëlle Billetdoux is a novelist and
scriptwriter. A Virginie Billetdoux acted in various movies between
1974 and 1980 (mostly French, but the 1980 was Spanish), but that's as
much as I know about her.

Mark BITTMAN

A food columnist for the New York Times. Until January 2011, he
wrote a weekly food column called ``The Minimalist.'' He also blogs or
blogged a few times a month at NYT's Diner's
Journal.

The surname Bittman arose in a few ways, but as it happens, none
of them seems to be related to the English word bite or
bit. Edward Schneider also contributes to the Diner's Journal
blog, and
schneider literally means `cutter' in German. (Yeah, yeah, a
less literal translation would be `tailor.' Picky, picky! Go pick at
your food.) Maybe this Schneider should have his own subentry, but
yesterday he blogged about pork-stuffed cabbage:
``A batch lasts through several meals, even when we have company to
help eat it, and perhaps that is why I don't need to make it more
frequently than I do.'' Ahem. And perhaps he should follow this train
of reasoning a bit further.

Although he is best remembered today for his discovery of latent
heat, his first published scientific work was his M.D. dissertation
(1754), a chemical investigation of magnesia alba -- `white
magnesia.'

Milk of magnesia is a white suspension of magnesium hydroxide
(Mg(OH)2) in water, used today as an antacid and mild
laxative. Magnesia alba is magnesium carbonate
(MgCO2). It's a mildly basic salt, rather than a base like
milk of magnesia, so it's not very useful as an antacid, but it was a
popular laxative at the time of Black's historic study.

Not that it has aught to do with any of this, but Joseph Black was a
Scotsman born in Bordeaux. (That's in France, okay? My amusing
observations are more amusing
if you know enough to be mildly surprised.) His father and
maternal grandfather worked there as factors (in the wine trade). Once
in Procter Hall (the graduate college dining
hall at Princeton University) I asked an economics
Ph.D. student I was talking with what she
was doing her dissertation on, and she said something like ``factors in
widget production,'' although it wasn't widgets but something I've
forgotten, lo, these 25 years later. So I said, approximately, ``oh, I
know -- don't tell me -- factors are uh, uh... commissioned
commercial agents!'' I was heartbreakingly pleased with myself for
knowing this bit of economic arcana, but I hadn't guessed what she
meant. She just gave me the look. On another occasion, in a
different food service facility (The Debasement Bar, downstairs from
the dining hall) a different economics graduate student (name withheld
because I don't remember it) gave me a virtually identical look, and
then explained it with the memorable words ``I can have any man I want
here.'' [Believe me: I would not, could not, make this up.] She
obviously understood the law of supply and demand, even if she could
not recognize intellectual enthusiasm. So perhaps the factors woman's
look meant the same thing -- it was in the same toxic male:female
ratio.

And the point here is about mathematics. At the time it didn't
occur to me to associate any mathematical sense of the word
factor with economics, because economic behavior, like all human
behavior, seems too slippery to make any very sophisticated
mathematical analysis appropriate (I was right, of course). Joseph
Black is remembered as the father of modern quantitative chemistry.
(It's also said that he weighed the guineas his students paid to attend
his popular courses.)

Mr. Blank is the owner of the Atlanta Falcons NFL franchise as of
this writing, around the time of a USAT
article published November 13, 2017: ``Jerry Jones taught a lesson by
fellow owners: He's not as powerful as he once was,'' byline Nancy
Armour, whom I commend for understated punning. She wrote:

Blank has mastered the art of speaking volumes by saying nothing. On
Sunday [2017.11.12], as he and Jones stood on their teams' respective
sidelines before the game, Blank made no effort to welcome Jones to the
swanky new stadium that Jones all but designed.

``[A]ll but designed'' here refers to the fact that Jones pioneered the
use of swanky stadiums (now typically subsidized by local governments
blackmailed by the threat of franchises moving elsewhere) as a revenue
tonic.

``That's rare,'' Jones acknowledged, when asked about the lack of
pleasantries. ``I've had games where I didn't visit for whatever
reasons, but it's rare.''

Chris Blank is either a writer for the Associated Press, or a typo
in the byline of ``Fired aide to ex-Mo. gov runs for gov's dad's
seat,'' which went out on September 2, 2010. Here's the first line:
``It's been three years since was fired [sic] after pointing out
that his then-boss, former , [sic ] and others in Blunt's
administration should not be deleting [oh yeah] certain e-mails
because they belonged to the public record.'' I wouldn't normally
think it necessary to mention this, but the comments in square brackets
are mine, and did not occur in the original article. Sic is a
Latin word meaning `thus,' used to indicate
that an oddity in quoted text is from the original, and not the fault
of the quoter.

The man fired was Eckersley, 33 (first name not stated). Now he's
running ``for a seat long held by [Roy, Matt, or perhaps Scott] Blunt's
father, outgoing U.S. . [sic].'' Also: ``It is ironic how the
whole thing has played out,'' Eckersley told at [sic] his
campaign office in , [sic] the Blunts' hometown. ``But what a
great story to come full circle and show that not only can a
whistleblower stand up and make a difference ... [explicit ellipsis
too... this story's got it all... missing] (but also) take that
experience and pack it up and take it to . [Sic.]''

One paragraph begins with a comma: ``, the head of the political
science department at in Springfield, said he thinks....'' In the old
days, these lacunae might have suggested that the author (Blank) had
neglected to insert appropriate TK's or or .
I suppose what happened here was that the missing text was incorrectly
marked up, although there aren't any stray tags visible in the source.

A philanthropic
couple who in 1920 acquired a woodsy property in the Georgetown
section of Washington, D.C. called Dumbarton Oaks. ``The name combines a
reference to the original [from the last time the glaciers receded,
presumably] great oaks on the site, several of which are still
standing, with the eighteenth-century name `Dumbarton,' taken from the
Rock of Dumbarton in Scotland.'' Twenty years later they conveyed the
estate, including gardens, a nineteenth-century ``Federal-style'' house,
and their collection to Harvard University. It's a long way from
D.C. to Cambridge; I'm pretty sure ``convey'' here does not mean
physically transport. Whatever. So Harvard now uses Dumbarton Oaks
as a research
resource (CHS) in Byzantine studies, the
history of landscape architecture, and pre-Columbian studies. The
collections of Byzantine and pre-Columbian art and the rare books and
prints relating to the gardens are on public display.

To those who are more concerned with post-Columbian civilizations,
Dumbarton Oaks is best known as the site of high-level discussions
among the major WWII Allies that led to the
creation of the UN. These were officially
known as the ``Washington Conversations on International Peace and
Security Organization'' and better known by the short (I believe
unofficial) name of ``Dumbarton Oaks Conference.''

Bobbs performed the first gallstone operation in the U.S. -- in
Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1867. For this he was honored and burdened
with the epithet ``father of cholecystectomy.'' Aww, thanks, guys, you
shouldn't have, really. When my former roommate Dennis graduated from
medical school, I gave him a self-tightening vice-grip and a single
disposable lab glove, and a card that noted that he had passed a great
milestone, and that this was far better than passing a great gallstone.
Okay, kidney stone. Whatever.

He reported the surgery (``he'' Bobbs, that is) to the Indiana State
Medical Society in May 1868. He was at the time president of its
surgery section. In fact, he was a founder and first secretary of the
Indianapolis Medical Society in 1848, and was instrumental in organizing
the Indiana State Medical Society the following year. [I don't know
whether he was wind-instrumental or string-instrumental or what. I'm
basically just quoting a brief memorial by Charles A. Bonsett, M.D. (MS
Word doc here).]

The nomen-est-omenicity that accounts for this sub-entry of the
glossary is the relevance of ``bob'' (doubtless ``bobb'' in some
antient spelyng) to Bobbs' calling and fame, but I only put this in so
as to amortize the lucubration required for my great kidney stone
witticism. See bob or the Loreena BOBBITT item above if you
don't get the ``bob'' connection.

There is a lack of consensus regarding the precise vital dates of John
Stough Bobbs. Most agree that he was born on December 28, 1809, but
according
to Find A Grave, it was December 22. And while most sites that
mention it give his date of death as April 12, 1870 (probably based on
each other, with the original date guess arising spontaneously as a
quantum fluctuation), Dr. Bonsett and Find A Grave agree that it was
May 1.

Well, the interviewer on the radio repeatedly pronounced his
surname ``Bona-SINK-uh,'' and I'm going with that. He's the author of
The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy
(Kensington Publishing, 2005). It's not entirely forgotten -- there
are annual commemorations and a dedicated historical society (EDHS, q.v.). But, as tragedies go, the
fame of this one is underproportionate to the number of lives lost --
800.

Gianni BONADONNA

An Italian oncologist known for his research on the treatment of
breast cancer. In Italian, buona donna means `good lady' or
`good woman.' (Bona is a dialectal variant of buona.)

Her mother Cher played the title role in the movie Chastity.
Chastity Sun was born on March 4, 1969; the movie was released on June
24. She was known by the nickname
``Chas,'' but never changed her legal
name. In 1993, she recalled that ``at school, guys would come up to me
with dictionaries and read me the definition of chastity.'' I guess
they weren't trying to pick her up in any sense of the term. I wonder
if this happens to girls named Faith or Serenity.

In 1995, confirming years of tabloid-press rumors, Chas ``came out'' in
a cover story in The Advocate (the oldest and largest
now-LGBT publication in the US). I
suppose, in principle, that a lesbian may be as chaste as anyone else.
Nevertheless, chastity is a traditional conservative notion, and
out-of-the-closet lesbianism isn't.

Is having a lesbian daughter some kind of occupational hazard of
Republican pols (like her late father Sonny Bono, former US Vice
President Dick Cheney, and Alan Keyes), or is
it just statistical chance?
In her 1998 book Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process
for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families, wrote that, "as a child, I
always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other
girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest
fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most
like cover girl Christie Brinkley. When I was 13, I finally found a
name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay.'' At the
time, her father was not yet a politician, but he was when she came
out.

More recently, Bono has been saying something slightly different.
Eventually Ms. Bono underwent gender reassignment surgery, keeping the
same girlfriend for a while as she (Chas) and then he (now Chaz
Salvatore Bono) did so. Gosh, the things people will do for a chance
to compete on Dancing With The Stars. Maybe the parents tempted fate,
word-playing around with the Sun/Sonny thing. Anyway, he's been saying
now that he knew from an early age that he was born in the wrong
body. I swear, after the next gender change, I may have to start
taking these self-discoveries with a grain of salt.

Jody BOURGEOIS

During the Soviet era, much of Russia was closed to outside
visitors, perhaps especially those from
bourgeois democracies.
One area that was off-limits was the Kamchatka-Kurils region (the
Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril islands). (This region is reportedly
now called the ``Russian Far East,'' though it seems unreasonable to me
to exclude eastern Siberia from that designation).

The Kamchatka-Kurils region is seismically very active, and therefore
of particular interest to seismologists around the Pacific rim. Jody
Bourgeois is a professor in the professor in the department of Earth
and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, and she has been
studying the Kamchatka-Kurils region. (Here's
an article on her research, from a UW house organ.)

BORING

This is the surname of a writer of engineering textbooks. I'll
look up some of his work later. For now I'll quote Douglas Richman, a
UCSD virologist. In 1993, analyzing the
frustration widely shared by scientists at the media's impatience with
ambiguity (easily explained by rich ignorance peppered with stupidity,
ISTM), he said ``[t]he trouble is, a
balanced scientific presentation is intrinsically boring to the
public.''

[Cue the falling calendar tear sheets to indicate the passage of time.]

Well, I checked some library catalogues, and it turns out that the
Borings are an industrious tribe. Nose-to-the-grindstone type of folk,
as you'd expect. So far, though, I've only found historians, a
theologian, a probate lawyer (hmmm...looks promising), an agricultural
entomologist, and a psychologist. I will keep digging.

[Cue the tick-tock sound to indicate the passage of time. Use some
echo-chamber effect to make it sound a little ominous, build to
anticlimax. Why are you reading this? These are the editing
directions!]

You know, I think I was just confusing Dull
and Boring. (But if you think I was just confusing, dull, and boring,
why are you still reading?)

Well anyway, here's some of the Boring fare I found:

Current Probate Decisions and Legislation, by James L.
Boring and Alan F. Rothschild, (Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, 1995). I suppose
if you stand to inherit some loot, it may be interesting. Dickens made
an interesting story (Bleak House) out of a Court of Chancery
case that lasted until... well, I won't spoil the story, but let's just
say it was a case of rather poor rich estate planning. I didn't know
that sort of case could be ``thrown out'' of court. Also in the story,
someone goes up in smoke. No -- literally! An instance
of SHC.

M. Eugene Boring has made a career in translating theological works.
In 2005, Baker Academic published Apostle Paul: His Life and
Theology, his translation of a book by Udo Schnelle. In 2002,
Westminster John Knox Press had published Boring's translation of a
book by Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter: The Quest for the Plausible
Jesus. Wake me when someone comes out with The Plausible Santa
Claus.

Fire Protection Through Modern Building Codes by Delbert F.
Boring, James C. Spence, and Walter G. Wells, (Washington, D.C.: American Iron and Steel Institute,
1981). Not a protection against SHC,
though.

Author of a thin picture book. The protraits aren't original; he
borrowed them from Federal reserve notes and other currency.
Specifically, he reproduced some portraits from currency (like Ben
Franklin's from the $100 bill, described as ``a US dollar'') in oil on
canvas and printed these on recto pages of the booklet, with a dozen or
so unrelated words arranged artistically (sideways and in
half-inch-high letters) on the facing pages. It's a keeper: the
library can keep it on the dollar table, as there don't seem to be any
takers.

Robert Boyle made a number of important early discoveries in
chemistry, and is best known for his work in the theory of gases. The
irony of his name has not escaped wits before me. Thomas Hood once
suggested to the Duke of Devonshire that ``Boyle on Steam'' would make
a fine sham volume in a library. [See Bon-mots [sic]
of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Walter Jerrold (London:
J. M. Dent, 1897), p. 88.]

Boyle discovered that for a fixed quantity of gas at a constant
temperature, pressure and volume vary inversely, publishing this fact
in 1662. A mere quelques années plus tard (1676), the
Frenchman Edme (Peter) Mariotte also discovered this law.
For this reason, we all call it la loi de Boyle-Mariotte.

The north-central German city of Braunschweig gave its name
to a couple of foods. One is a yeast-dough cake with brown-sugar
icing; it's still popular in Denmark, where it is known by the name
Brunsviger. The other is a very homogenized smoked liver
sausage. Loosely, therefore, it's like a cold hot dog. In fact,
considering what's allowed to go into hot dogs, one would probably
prefer a Braunschweiger to a Frankfurter. Still, it's not recommended
that you eat it raw directly by biting the end of it.

In October 2002, a 35-year-old man in Braunschweig was arrested for
kicking his pet and biting it on the nose. He was reprimanded, and the
dog, a black and white husky crossbreed, was put in a shelter to await
a new owner. Considering that this was a classic case of
man bites dog, it's surprising how
little coverage this story received. Even the newswires didn't bite.

[Braunschweig is known as
Brunswick in English. Both names are derived from the personal
name Bruno (related to brown). The second part of the name (also
spelled -wich in various English place names) comes from a widely-used
Indo-European root for a collection of houses. The Latin reflex is vicus, `village, row of
houses.']

Second-billed star of a dim 2006 movie with the title of
Ultraviolet. They don't call it black light for nothing, I guess. Or
they do call it... Ah, never mind. (I think this movie
starred Milla Jovovich's abs. Anyway, their owner got top billing.)

Bright's birth name was Cameron Douglas Crigger. (Wait, don't tell me
-- problem was, there was already someone registered with the
SAG under the name ``Cameron Douglas
Crigger,'' right?) Anyway, he took his stage name long before he was
cast in Ultraviolet. His first lead role was in the movie Godsend (a
2004 release starring Robert De Niro, Greg Kinnear, and Rebecca
Romijn), filmed in 2002, when he was nine. Bright's first acting work
(it was in a commercial) was when he was six. That was also his name
in Ultraviolet -- Six, a nine-year-old boy.

TMI yet? I don't know when Ultraviolet
was filmed, but on the evidence of the semi-final product, editing
needn't have taken long. There was some delay, however, because the
studio was unhappy with the original version, which they saw as ``too
emotional.'' They butchered it down from 120 minutes to 88 and achieved
a PG-13 rating, and on release, March 5, 2006, Bright was a couple of
months past his own 13th birthday.

Jovovich played Violet Song Jat Shariff; her role got the lion's share
of the proper proper-noun nouns, but even that name includes ``violet''
and ``song.'' Dramatis personae include a Detective Cross and
Detective Breeder. (To say nothing of Six. We don't want to mention
``BF-1'' either. Oops, too late!) If poor judgment is conserved or
nondecreasing, then we should all be grateful that they concentrated so
much of it into this one disposable movie. The thing was written and
directed by Kurt Wimmer, who also created ``Gun Kata'' (a ``unique
blend of gunfighting and martial arts'') for his previous film,
Equilibrium. It is said that Jovovich used a more ``authentic''
version of Gun Kata in this movie, relieving me of the need to invent
such a claim for your amusement.

But maybe, as Wimmer and many of his fans believe, this was a far
better film before the studio's complete re-edit. Do we have any other
evidence regarding Wimmer's brightness level? Yes we do!
While on the set, Kurt Wimmer asked Milla Jovovich to punch him so he
could get a feel for the intensity she was putting into her action
sequences. For several days afterwards, Wimmer directed the film with
a literal black eye. Thank you, Milla.

Y'know, back there where I wrote ``TMI,'' I thought of my friend Fu, a
naturalized US citizen. He's originally from Shanghai. Casting for
this movie was done in Hong Kong; filming was in Shanghai and perhaps
also Hong Kong. I suppose Shanghai is to Hong Kong what Vancouver is
to Hollywood -- a convenient and less expensive filming venue up north
along the Pacific. Cameron Bright was born in Victoria, BC, and as of
2013 -- so far as
<imdb.com>
knows -- still lives on Vancouver Island. As I shouldn't have to
remind you, this item is all about Cameron Bright and his name. Insert
your own Shanghai joke here:
____.
______?
__!
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk:-)
When he went to register to vote (in Missouri), Fu took his US passport
as ID, and the registrar, or recorder, or
whatever the idiot's title was, wouldn't accept it as proof of age
because it didn't state his age (only his date
of birth). Perhaps there was some confusion as to the reason, but
it's not the first time I've heard of election officials in the US
refusing to accept a US passport as ID.

Remember that anecdote. The next time you're on TV doing
election-night analysis and have a weird result from ``bell-wether''
Missouri, this will explain it no matter whither the wether wandered
off to.

The name of the, uh, entertainer -- yeah that's it, entertainer --
who performs as Snoop Dogg. He is the host of the ``Girls Gone Wild''
video series, in which young women (``amateur girls'' is the enigmatic
technical term I see in the spam that gets
through my filters) bare their breasts at cameras and later sometimes
sue the distributor of the videos (Mantra Films Inc., owned by Joseph
R. Francis). Repeat 84,000 times: ``What is informed consent?''
Informed consent apparently consists of a sign posted in the video
shooting area that says ``By entering, you consent to the use of such
film [sic, possibly misreported] and your image in a commercial
film product.'' Court records in a civil suit brought in Louisiana,
settled on July 21, 2004, indicate that some of the apparently drunk
naked girls are not of legal age to drink.

The videos are advertised on late-night television and sold by
mail-order and also what might be called mail-disorder. Also in July
2004, Mantra Films agreed to pay nearly $1.1 million to settle
FTC claims that the company shipped video tapes or DVD's
to people who had not ordered them, then billed these ``customers.''
(It's a lot like sample issues,
free!)

As part of the settlement, the company pays more than $548,000 to
people who received the materials and returned them but were not
reimbursed for shipping costs. Money is due at least 84,000 victims.
Mantra has gotten off too easily so far; there should be triple
indemnity for fraud, and damages for harassment and emotional distress.
As a society, we are sometimes not nearly litigious enough. As of
August 2004, racketeering and other charges are pending against Francis
in Florida.

BRONFMAN Family

A prominent Canadian family whose wealth is based on patriarch
Samuel Bronfman's business in distilled spirits. Bronfman is a
Yiddish word meaning `distiller' or `liquor merchant' (from the word
bronfn, `brandy.') Some of Samuel Bronfman's ancestors must
have been in the business, but his immediate ancestors were not. His
father, who had become wealthy as a tobacco farmer in Bessarabia (then
part of Imperial Russia, now of Moldova) discovered that Manitoba is
not good tobacco-growing country and went into other businesses (not
including the brewing or wholesale distribution of alcoholic
beverages).

(The Bronfman family is associated with Seagram's. It should be noted,
however, that Samuel Bronfman actually founded a liquor distributor,
Distillers Corporation Limited, in 1924. The company later acquired
Joseph E. Seagram & Sons and took over the Seagram name, so it is
incorrect to say, as some do, that Bronfman founded Seagram. Even
Seagram didn't found Seagram. The distillery was originally founded in
1857; Joseph E. Seagram only became a partner in 1869, then sole owner
in 1883. He died in 1919 and his heirs sold it to Bronfman in 1928.
Starting in the mid-1990's, Seagram's assets were sold to various other
companies, and the Seagram Company Ltd. went out of business in 2000.)

The founder of Australia's Green Party, and currently (2008) its
leader. (To be precise, what he founded in 1972 -- with a first
meeting in his living room -- was the United Tasmania Group, which is
described as ``Australia's first `green' party.'' The official name
of the party is now the
Australian
Greens.) This party is widely described as the ``world's first
`Green' party.'' I guess that means it was either the first political
party in the world to make environmental issues the central part of its
platform, or the first to be founded with the intention of making
environmental issues the central part of its platform. This may be,
but by the time Bob Brown first assumed elective office in 1983, as a
member of the Tasmania state parliament, many other issues were in the
mix. In his first term, he introduced a variety of private member
initiatives, including bills for a freedom-of-information act, ``Death
with Dignity,'' a lowering of parliamentary salaries, ``gay rights
legislation, banning of the battery-hen industry, whatever that is, and
a ``nuclear free Tasmania.'' I guess the last two count as green in a
strict sense.

In the seventh and eighth games of the 2001 season, this NFL team was beaten in overtime on plays by
opposing players named Brown. On November 4 in Chicago, Bears safety
Mike Brown returned an interception for a TD that beat Cleveland 27-21. On November
11, the traditional Veterans' Day, Pittsburgh kicker Kris Brown scored
a field goal in OT to lift the Steelers to a
15-12 win.

After the 1945 season, the NFL-champion Cleveland Rams became the first
pro football team to move to the west coast, becoming the LA Rams for
1946. Also in 1946, one of the most successful competitors of the NFL
was created in the AAFC.

Paul Brown was already a college coaching legend when Art ``Mickey''
McBride, founder of the AAFC Cleveland team, hired him to be the first
coach and named the team after him. Paul Brown was a great innovator,
and one relatively innovative thing he did in 1946 was to hire a couple
of brown-eyed players.

``Brown-eyed'' is a coy way of saying dark-skinned. I think this is
clear enough in Murray McLauchlin's ``Brown-Eyed Man'' and in Chuck
Berry's ``Brown Eyed Handsome Man.'' It might count as something like
an in-joke, since I don't think I've ever heard any white people use
it, unless Van Morrison counts. He was quoted
in books published in 1996 and 2006 to the effect that the title was
originally meant to be ``Brown-Skinned Girl'' (reflecting the fact that
it was ``a kind of Jamaican song'') and that he absentmindedly changed
the title to ``Brown Eyed Girl,'' not noticing he had done so until
after recording it. He apparently didn't explain how he happened to
change the chorus to match the mistaken title. The explanations are a
bit confusing. The 1996 book is entitled Inarticulate Speech of the
Heart. Look, I like the song, and I think the word ``eyed'' works
better musically, but songs associated with Jamaica seem to induce
linguistic lapses. For another example, see the ``Louie, Louie''
material under Mojo Risin, Mr.

(I can't think of any convincing evidence for my claim at the beginning
of the previous paragraph, so I guess it's time to switch the subject
with an irrelevant personal anecdote. When I was filling out the
application for my first driver's license, I asked a guy filling out
his own form next to me what color my eyes were and he said ``hazel.''
Eventually I had a look at my eyes in the mirror and decided that they
were brown. Well, they are mostly white, but the iris is brown. When
people say ``eye color'' they normally mean iris color, unless they're
talking about jaundice or bloodshot eyes or something. Also, when
people name colors, there's a certain amount of context. To the guy I
asked, who was black, ``brown'' was probably the color of his own eyes,
while mine, being lighter, required some other term -- hence ``hazel.''
But they're not as light as those that I would call hazel, so I think
of them as brown, and I changed that. I also remeasured myself and
raised my height a half an inch the last time I renewed, and I think
somewhere along the line I may have changed my middle initial. Someday
when I go to renew my license I'll probably be arrested for stealing my
own identity.)

Paul Brown coached the Cleveland Browns from its first season in
1946 to 1962, when the third owner (also an Art M. -- television
executive Arthur B. Modell) fired him at the end of the season. One of
greatest running backs of all time, fullback Jim Brown, played his
entire career (1957-1965) at Cleveland.
Paul and Jim were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967
and 1971, resp.

Paul Brown later went on to be majority owner and first coach (1968 to
1975) of the Cincinnati Bengals, whose home field today is in ``Paul
Brown Stadium.''

An inventor of electrical devices, including a generator and an
electric arc lamp. (All electric generators before Tesla's had
brushes.)

JOHN BUchAN

His name evokes that of John Bunyan (1628-1688), a preacher who
wrote an allegory that became the second-best-selling book in the
English-speaking world (after the Bible). The title was The
Pilgrim's Progress. John Buchan, the son of a Presbyterian
minister, was also a popular writer, but he achieved high sales volume
more by being absurdly prolific than by preeminence. Today, he's
possibly better remembered as the Scottish Unionist politician John
Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, who served as Governor General of Canada
from 1935 until his death in 1940. Either that, or as the author of
Thirty-Nine Steps, which was made into a film by Alfred
Hitchcock. Anyway, it seemed reasonable that his memoir, published
posthumously in 1940, was titled Pilgrim's Way: An Essay in
Recollection. It was well-known to be a favorite, if not the
favorite, book of JFK. I was surprised to
learn that Pilgrim's Way was the title only in the US, and that
everywhere else in the English-speaking world it apparently bore the
title Memory Hold-the-Door (I'm not absolutely certain what the
hyphenated expression means, because it seems never to have been a very
common expression for a door-stop) with no subtitle. (The text of the
US edition doesn't seem to have differed from that of the other
published edtions; even the spellings were unchanged. However, the US
edition, from Houghton-Mifflin, had no illustrations. The editions
published in London by Hodder & Stoughton had ten full-page plates made
from photographs.)

Pilgrim's Way as I shall continue to call it, refers often to
pilgrims and pilgrimage. It alludes to and often simply evokes
Pilgrim's Progress, and no wonder. Here is a paragraph from
chapter I, recalling Buchan's childhood. (The phrase ``people the
woods'' below seems to mean something like `provide personalities to
think about as he grew up in a woodland area near the Firth of Forth.')

One other book disputed the claim of the Bible to people the
woods--The Pilgrim's Progress. On Sundays it was a rule that
secular books were barred, but we children did not find the embargo
much of a penance, for we discovered a fruity line in missionary
adventure, we wallowed in martyrologies, we had The Bible in
Spain, and above all we had Bunyan. From The Holy War I
acquired my first interest in military operations, which cannot have
been the intention of the author, while The Pilgrim's Progress
became my constant companion. Even to-day I think that, if the text
were lost, I could restore most of it from memory. My delight in it
came partly from the rhythms of its prose, which, save in King James's
Bible, have not been equalled in our literature; there are passages,
such as the death of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, which all my life have made
music in my ear. But its spell was largely due to its plain narrative,
its picture of life as a pilgrimage over hill and dale, where
surprising adventures lurked by the wayside, a hard road with now and
then long views to cheer the traveller and a great brightness at the
end of it. John Bunyan claimed our woods as his own. There was the
Wicket-gate at the back of the colliery, where one entered them; the
Hill Difficulty--more than one; the Slough of Despond--various
specimens; the Plain called Ease; Doubting Castle--a disused
gravel-pit; the Enchanted Land--a bog full of orchises; the Land of
Beulah--a pleasant grassy place where tinkers made their fires. There
was no River at the end, which was fortunate perhaps, for otherwise my
brothers and I might have been drowned in trying to ford it.

In 1640, Richelieu forbade local mints from issuing any but
low-denomination coins, and simultaneously introduced a standard gold
coin, the Louis d'or. (Cardinal Richelieu was from 1624 until
his death the chief minister of French king
Louis XIII's government. He was famously successful at this job.)
Charles Bullion was the long-time finance minister under Richelieu and
hosted the new coin's introduction. [For another French finance
minister, see the eponymous
Silhouette.]

Don't confuse Charles Bullion with the powerful and more interesting
Duke of Bouillon. The duke and his duchy straddled the border of
the Bourbon-Habsburg battlefield. In 1642, as the Cardinal was slowly
dying, Bouillon took part in the treason organized by the marquis de
Cinq Mars. It failed, and Bouillon was in the soup. After
negotiations with Richelieu, he ended up ceding the fortress capital of
Sedan to the crown, more-or-less in exchange for his own life.
[For another pair of names involving oui and non, and
for the example set by a renowned mathematical physicist of how one
should deal with those odious sniveling cretins who conflate them,
see the Liouville entry.]

But perhaps I should mention that Sedan was of some broad military and
consequently political significance later on. On September 1, 1870,
German armies (of the Second Reich) under Bismarck's leadership broke
through French defenses at Sedan, forcing the capitulation of Emperor
Napoleon III. This led to the overthrow of the ``Second Empire'' (the
Second French Empire, by a counting that not too unreasonably excludes
Charlemagne's) and its replacement by the Third Republic in 1876. The
German victory in the Franco-Prussian war established the new European
order that would prevail until WWI.

On May 15, 1940, German armies (Third Reich this time) broke through
the French defenses of the Meuse and surrounded Sedan. Once the full
extent of the defeat became clear, it was simply a matter of time
until France sought an armistice. Hitler dictated the terms, which
became known on June 20 and were signed on June 22. In after years it
became popular to claim that Marshal Pétain staged a coup that
overthrew the Third Republic, but it is more accurate to say that the
National Assembly ratified its own suspension and the end of the
republic on July 10, 1940.

The Fifth Republic was created in 1958 as a constitutional republican
government of, for, and by Charles de Gaulle, but has progressed into
a benevolent dictatorship of the bureaucrats, all eager to become
Eurocrats. If the Fifth Republic lasts until 2033, it will surpass the
Third Republic as France's longest-lasting experiment in democracy. I
write this in 2003. A lot may happen in 30 years, and a lot may not.

Bill BURDEN

A lawyer who has represented Canada 3000. Details at the John
GROUND subentry.

A professor of psychology at the University of Texas, his books
include Sex, Power, Conflict (1996), The Dangerous
Passion (2000), and The Evolution of Desire (1994; 4/e,
2003). His studies show, among other things, that women prefer to
marry up (``hypergamy'') and are happier if they do. You don't say!
Men who surf the web probably have better marriage prospects than those
who don't. You may now kiss the bride.

Ron G. BUTTERY

A US Agricultural Research Service scientist who specialized in
flavor chemistry. Co-editor, with Roy Teranishi and Fereidoon Shahidi,
of Flavor Chemistry: Trends and Developments
(ACS, 1989). [And other stuff, I'm sure,
but that was what came to hand. In this particular instance, all three
editors have surnames ending in the same vowel, sort of as if all three
were flavor adjectives. The only Teranishi I know, however, elides the
final vowel in the name -- standard Japanese practice.]

Richard Byrd was a US Navy pilot who became famous in 1926 for
flying to the North Pole (from a base on Spitsbergen, a Norwegian
island far above the Arctic Circle). It seems certain now, especially
based on relevant diary entries made public in 1996 (Byrd died in
1957), that Byrd went more than 75% of the way to the pole but lied
about reaching it. Nevertheless, the resulting fame (particularly in
America, where his claims were generally believed) brought him private
financing for other aviation feats, and he left the service in 1927.
(He returned in 1940 and reretired in 1947 with the rank of Rear
Admiral.)

If only his name had been Bird, he would have made it 100% of the way
to the North Pole. (Actually, he was born in Winchester, Virginia. So
perhaps the relevant criterion is whether he was an authentic member of
the illustrious Byrd family of Virginia. See FFV if this does not compute.)

An ``educator and activist'' based in Harlem (the one in New York
City). It may not seem like a very noteworthy fact that he's not
``based in'' (I don't know what this means, really) Canada, but it's
weird to read about him (``when Canada was in Los Angeles'' and parking
was at a premium, ``Canada agreed to be interviewed by [filmmaker
Davis] Guggenheim, but still had his doubts''). Maybe he was forced to
emigrate when ``smart'' online forms made his life a bureaucratic
nightmare. (Cf.this AB.)

As it happens, one way that he's based in Harlem is that he founded and
runs a charter school there. But he's originally from the South Bronx.
I learned this from a PBS TV program created
and hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The particular episode I saw was
focused on the genealogies of Canada (evidently a major undertaking)
and Barbara Walters. It turns out that Canada had ancestors who were
surnamed Cannaday when they emerged from slavery. His earliest
traceable ancestor with that name was the son of a slave woman on a
plantation owned by a man named Cannaday in Franklin County, Virginia.
Circumstantial evidence and available genetic evidence suggest that the
surname is justified by parentage as well as plantation of origin.
``Cannaday'' is evidently a variant form of the common Irish name
Kennedy. I'll try to remember to learn something about the name now
that I'm back home in Indiana.

On the opening day of CSWIP 2005 (the
conference website
seems to have vanished), Cheshire Calhoun was scheduled to deliver
the plenary address, entitled ``Losing One's Self.'' I'm afraid I
missed it, myself -- I mean the lecture -- but I imagine everything
went off as planned.

Mr. Carabine was the Chief Classification Officer, Kingston
Penitentiary, Ontario. (He had a contribution to the section on
Utilization and Coordination of Treatment Facilities in Prison in the
1957 conference mentioned at the binding
entry.) His contribution starts on page 128 of the English
Proceedings and one ``F.F. Carabine'' has a contribution to the
companion FrenchRapport. I guess
I never appreciated the magnitude of the French animus against W. The
English side gets in its digs by dropping the hyphens in J.-C.
LaFerrière and the like. I bet you never realized how much
orthographic inside baseball is played in these meetings.)

Anyway, I thought it interesting that someone named Carabine should
have gotten into the corrections business. Carabine is an
alternate English spelling, and the standard French spelling, of
carbine (i.e. carbine rifle).

A writer on motorcycling. He was the author of a little volume
(26 pp.) Motor Cycling for Beginners in 1979 (from
EP Publishing), and just three years later he published Advanced
Motor Cycling (27 pp., from A & C Black Publishers
Ltd.). He also wrote for the English magazine Motorcycle
Monthly, at least in 1978.

He chose to make his career at Tuskegee Institute, where he spent a
lot of time contemplating peanuts. Had
he chosen Buffalo, the destiny of jelly composite sandwiches would have
been quite different.

Vocabulary word for this lesson: arachibutyrophobia. (Meaning:
`fear of having spiders get into your butter,' I think, but be sure to
check at the granola entry.)

I guess that when I wrote this subentry, I must have thought that there
couldn't not be some ironic connection between his name and some aspect
of his research into peanut products. I still feel that way, but I
haven't discovered it yet (unless you count the fact that of all the
peanut products he came up with, none was peanut butter). That's how
it is sometimes.

A tee-shirt printer and musician in Toronto, who came up with the
idea for the Pillow Fight League (PFL).
PFL contestants or participants or athletes or whatever fight in
costume.

Stacey is a guy. On New Year's Eve 2005, his band played a bar in
Toronto. The act that followed his was a mock pillow fight put on by a
local burlesque troupe. Women from the audience came forward hoping to
participate. An idea was born.

A professor of accounting at Hofstra University, and
Editor-in-Chief of Handbook for Auditors (McGraw-Hill, 1971,
reissued 1982), which finally, finally, was published as Cashin's
Handbook for Auditors (McGraw-Hill, 1986), a revised edition
co-edited with Paul D. Neuwirth and John F. Levy.

For a number of Schaum's outlines in accounting, Cashin collaborated
with Joel L. Lerner, M.S., P.D., once chairman of Faculty of Business
at Sullivan County Community College. [One that is ready to hand is
Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Accounting
II, (McGraw-Hill, 1974). There were subsequent editions in 1981,
1989 (by which time he was retired), 1994, and 1999, not counting
translations into Spanish,
French, and Chinese, so you might say he
cashed in, or amortized the original investment of effort. Not to
mention Principles of Accounting, (McGraw-Hill, 2001) ``based on
Schaum's Principles of Accounting I.'']

The New York Yankees had the most expensive roster in baseball from
1998 to 2012. (In 2013 they were reportedly overtaken by the Dodgers.)
Brian McGuire Cashman has been (as of 2013) the Yankees' general
manager since 1998. The GM job includes, among other things,
negotiating player contracts with the players and their agents.

Two presidents of the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame du Lac
-- the one in Indiana). The first was Rev.
Fr.John W. Cavanaugh,
C.S.C., president 1905-1919. The second, Rev. Fr.
John J. Cavanaugh,
C.S.C., was president 1946-1952. They weren't genetically related
in any known way, but the junior
one worked as a secretary for the senior one when he was university
president. When John W. retired from the presidency, he gave John J. a
parting gift of a full scholarship to Notre
Dame.

Editor of Encyclopedia of the City (London and New York:
Routledge, 2005).

P.C. Cheng

A former colleague of mine in the Electrical Engineering Department
at UB. His name came up in connection with
some research at the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve one lunch, and I remember
Jack saying something like ``he's an electrical engineer and you call
him `P.C.,' and you don't think that's
funny?'' No.

Charles Waddell CHESTNUTt

The first African-American fiction writer of note. Born in
Cleveland in 1858 to free black parents, he was certainly ``black'' by
social definition. Phenotypically, however, he apparently didn't look
any more black than Sam Clemens. To judge from a black-and-white
photograph, even Hazelnutt would have been an ironic name.

Charles MANNING CHILD

A zoologist who studied reproduction and development. He's
actually best remembered (he lived 1869-1954) for his work on
regeneration of limbs, but it's slightly harder to tie that specific
topic in with ``manning'' and ``child,'' especially as the phenomenon
occurs primarily in simple animals.

FORREST CHURCH

The author of

Father and Son: A Biography of Senator Frank Church
The Devil and Dr. Church
Entertaining Angels
Everyday Miracles
The Seven Deadly Virtues
A Chosen Faith (with John Buehrens)
God and Other Famous Liberals
Life Lines: Holding On and Letting Go
Lifecraft: The Art of Living for the Everyday
The American Creed: A Biography of the Declaration of
Independence
Bringing God Home: A Spiritual Guidebook for the Journey of Your
Life
Freedom from Fear: Finding the Courage to Love, Act, and Be
So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over
Church and State

and editor of

Continuities and Discontinuities in Church History
The Essential Tillich [Paul Tillich was a famous
theologian]
The Macmillan Book of Earliest Christian Prayers
The Macmillan Book of Earliest Christian Hymns
The Macmillan Book of Earliest Christian Meditations
One Prayer at a Time
Without Apology: Writings of A. Powell Davies
The Jefferson Bible
Restoring Faith: American Religious Leaders Answer Terror With
Hope
The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom
by America's Founders.

So he's destroyed veritable forests in the process of writing various
church-related (and Church-related) books. I cribbed most of this list
from the also-by page in So Help Me God, so help me God, and
that's what inspired me to center the titles. If I hadn't chosen to
pun on his given name, it would have been a much shorter entry.

Carol P. CHRIST

Carol P. Christ was born a Lutheran (well, close enough -- they
believe in infant baptism, don't they?) and eventually became a
priestess of Aphrodite. She has written extensively on women's
spirituality and feminist theology, and has taught at various
universities. Christ, of course, is a loan of the Greek
christós `anointed [one].'

I became aware of Christ (I like to write that) because of a
coincidence of titles. The classicist Peter Green wrote The
Laughter of Aphrodite: An Historical Novel about Sappho (Murray,
1965). Carol P. Christ wrote a collection of essays called The
Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess,
(Harper and Row, 1987). Another coincidence involving Carol P. Christ
is that Carol T. Christ is a prominent academic (a scholar of Victorian
literature).

I mention this Churchill here because the most famous man he shares a
surname with is also known for his military campaigns and his narrative
stylistics. There is also a connection between Winston S. Churchill
and Latin; the former was famously defeated
by the latter.

Ironically enough, the same university (UCB) is famous for another
Churchill, also quite combative. In July 2009, after years of
litigation, it seems they were finally able to make Prof. Ward
Churchill's firing stick.

Andrew CLEMENCY

A defense attorney in Phoenix, Arizona. Most criminal cases that
go to trial end in conviction on at least one count. Clemency,
therefore, is much sought. Andrew Clemency was in the news on June 28,
2012, when his client Michael J. Marin, 53, collapsed in the courtroom
and died within minutes of being convicted of arson.

Video of the scene went viral. Shortly after the jury's verdict was
read, Marin covered his mouth with his hand, which seems natural
enough, and appeared to press the palm toward his lips, which does not.
He seems to have taken a suspected second pill surreptitiously as
proceedings continued, and he took drinks from a drink bottle that I
don't think TSA would have allowed. The
possibility of suicide by poison pill was immediately suspected, but
toxicology results won't be back for months from this writing.

The charge on which he was convicted was felony arson of an occupied
structure, which carries a penalty of from 7 to 21 years in prison.
The structure was his own mansion, occupied by himself. Marin, a
retired Wall Street trader, had tried to raffle off the mansion
earlier, but the raffle had been deemed illegal. At the time of the
blaze he had $50 left in the bank, thousands of dollars in delinquent
debts, and a $2.3 million balloon payment coming due.

He climbed down a rope ladder from a second-floor window of the
burning house, wearing scuba gear. (SCUBA, as you may learn at
its entry, stands for Self-Contained
Underwater Breathing Apparatus, but it evidently works in smoke as well
as under water.) The house was described as ``engulfed in flames,''
and was later found to have begun at four separate ignition points, and
firefighters ``were forced to assume a defensive mode after learning
that no one was in the house,'' according to a Phoenix New Times
article August 27, 2009, about a week after Marin's arrest. It does
appear that an occupant was endangered, even if it was the setter of
the blaze himself.

A mountain climber who had reached the summit of Mr. Everest, and a
former Wall Street trader whose art collection included 18 original
Picasso works, Marin seems to have been a more imaginative and
ambitious planner than the average person. I suppose the timing of the
fire (before dawn on July 5, 2009) may have been part of a calculation
based on the Independence Day work load of firefighters. (Fortunately,
at the time of the fire the art works and various other valuables were
at a modest home Marin had in nearby Gilbert -- about 10 miles from
where I used to have a modest home in Tempe.)

The case went to trial when plea-bargain negotiations broke down. A
spokesman for the prosecutor's office said that a sentence of somewhere
between 10.5 and 21 years in prison would have been sought after
conviction. Experts quoted in news reports said that, based on
comparable cases (similar and worse crimes were cited) this would have
been a relatively harsh sentence, and that a plea bargain would have
resulted in a lighter one. Of course, in plea bargaining the
prosecutor's office has to factor in the possibility of an acquital,
whereas in sentencing a judge does not. Had there been one I, for one,
am certain Clemency would have asked for a certain clemency.

Phyllis CLEVELAND

In 2005, Phyllis
Cleveland was elected by the fifth ward to serve on the Cleveland
City Council.

BILL Clinton

The text of a legislative act is a bill, and as governor of
Arkansas and president of the US, Bill Clinton exercised great if
technically indirect influence on bills. Every US president should be
a Bill or Billie. If this rule had been in effect since the beginning,
it would have eliminated all or almost all of our worst presidents. Of
course, it would also have had the side effect of eliminating the likes
of Abraham Lincoln, but who's to say that the more experienced William
Seward would not have done as well? If the rule had been in effect in
2015, it would have winnowed the field of 22 or so prospective
``credible'' candidates for 2016 down and focused attention on the
smaller and more manageable subfield of 0 who might be truly qualified
for the office.

A US Air Force captain from Meridian,
Mississippi. In the Summer of 1990, Coats volunteered for a posting as
a NORAD quality-control evaluator at the
DEW Line, on the outskirts of
Tuktoyaktuk (``Tuk''), a village of
800 Eskimos in the Northwest Territories of Canada, on the Arctic
coast. His commanding officer told him: ``For 20 years I've been
threatening to send lieutenants to the DEW line. You're the first guy
I've known who has asked for it.'' Coats considered it the least among
evils, since he had to fulfill a career requirement of at least one
``remote posting.'' Tuktoyaktuk is 250 miles north of the Arctic
Circle, in the ``banana belt'' (as opposed to the eastern Arctic, which
is really cold). It's ``an unseasonably [is that the right word?] warm
day'' (above freezing) in the Summer of 1991 when a reporter for the Washington Post interviews him, but Captain
Coats is wearing a (single)
parka. ``You'd have to be crazy to come here for the weather,'' he
notes.

Author of The English Dictionarie, or an Interpreter of Hard
English Words, first published in 1623. This would be
unexceptionable, except that the OED2,
instead of defining the verb irrumate, gives only a quote from
Cockeram's dictionary (and he defines it, um, backwards).

Father and son respectively. Their Jamaica-based family business
(according to various criminal indictments) is drug smuggling (and the
usual concomitants, such as arms trafficking and political
manipulation).

The way CMUD explained it, it was all
the result of people in neighboring houses pouring grease down their
drains. It sounds innocent enough, but it built up over time and
clogged the sewer line. Evidently, this closed space accumulated
flammable and even explosive substances (methane, I imagine). Finally,
one very bad day in February 2006, ``[w]e heard a thump,'' said Marilyn
Colon. There was apparently a discernible moment's pause before her
toilet exploded. ``Feces, urine, oil...it went all through the
house,'' said Colon.

This reminds me that the main sewer of ancient Rome was known as the
cloaca.

On Sunday,
February 14, 1779, he and four of his men were killed in a
confrontation with Hawaiian natives at Kealakekua Bay. Their bodies
were left on the beach and taken away by the Hawaiians. The next week,
when the explorers (and invaders -- stress according to your political,
uh, tastes)
attempted to retrieve at least the captain's remains, they were
informed by native priests that he had been given a chief's disposal;
his bones had been burned and were kept by the Hawaiian King. The
priests denied that he had been eaten. Most of the large bones were
eventually returned, with burn marks and great solemnity, and a known
hand injury was regarded by the ships' officers as positive
identification. (It did turn out that some of the bones had apparently
been distributed elsewhere.) The ribs and vertebrae were never
returned. Some arm bones said to be of one of the marines were also
returned. The Europeans early on received seven or eight pounds of
rotting (deboned) thigh said to be Cook's, but they were also later
informed that the flesh of his deboned body (which was not returned)
had been salted and preserved. Apart from the thigh meat, no other
flesh was recovered.

The preceding summary is based mostly on The Voyages of Captain
James Cook, copyright 1999 by Richard P. Aulie. Part of this is
available online from the Captain Cook Society (CCS).
What really happened is controversial, which probably means that if I
read something else I'll only get confused.

Of course, ``Hawaii'' is a Hawaiian name. When Captain Cook discovered
the islands in 1778, he named them the Sandwich Islands (after the Earl
of Sandwich).

William COOKWORTHY

Cookworthy (1705-1780) was an English chemist who developed and
patented (1768) a process to make fine white porcelain from raw
materials available locally (especially if you lived in Cornwall).
Even using ``China clay'' imported from China or America, the best
porcelain manufactured in England was not comparable to that made in
China, but Cookworthy's work changed that. [So I've read. On the
other hand, I seem to recall reading in House Beautiful (a
nineteenth-century classic) that the best china was from France, and
that England was only good for stoneware. However, my copy of the book
is at home.)

A nineteenth-century ichthyologist. More generally he was a
paleontologist and a prolific taxonomist of vertebrate paleontology,
but he was also active in ichthyology and herpetology, and for this
part of the glossary, that's the salient fact. If you break up
herpetology into the study of amphibians and reptiles, then two thirds
of his living-creatures work involved creatures that live all or much
of their lives in the drink.

Juan Carlos Córdoba Ocana

The given name of a Mexican outlaw who went by what you might call
the nom de guerre ``El Furcio.'' If all the world's a stage,
then that name explains why this player has had his exit.

Reggie CORNER

A cornerback for the NFL's Buffalo Bills, who drafted him in 2008.
At the University of Akron he played free safety and cornerback.

The conqueror of Mexico, born in 1485 in Medellín, in the
Spanish province of Extremadura. His
parents were both of noble
descent (that don means `sir'), but his family was in reduced
circumstances. A weak and sickly child (okay, I admit this isn't
relevant), he was packed off at age 14 to Salamanca. [This implicitly
means to the great university at Salamanca. Salamanca's fame was such
that it became an antonomasia for
higher education. There was even a saying, still recalled today in
its archaic expression -- Lo que Natura non da, Salamanca non
presta. (`What nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend.'
More loosely: Human garbage in, human garbage
out.) Anyway, back
to our story.] The intent was for young Hernando to study law, but
after two years he returned home without the university having bestowed
the slightest mark of recognition of accomplishment. (``[S]in ... el
mas pequeño lauro universitario,'' as the Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada puts
it.)
[You know, I was about to characterize Salamanca as the great
medieval Spanish university. As it happens, the modern era began precisely in 1500, so
Hernando just got in under the wire. Renaissance? What Renaissance?]

Not to keep you in suspense any longer, the reason that Cortés
is listed here is that he came from a noble family and studied law, and
his name means `courts' ... almost. Actually, his name means
`courteous'; courts would be cortes (no accent; accentual stress
on penult instead of ult). In Spanish as in English, the words for
courtesy (or courtly behavior) and courtesan were derived from the word
for court.
The enciclopedia has listings for some individuals with the
surname Cortés and somewhat fewer with surname
Cortes. And I've seen the name of this particular conquistador
written every which way, final ess or final zee, accent either way.
Look, we're going to stick to the court angle; I really don't
want to get into what happened in Mexico. There was both diplomacy and
mayhem involved.

Incidentally (or ``BTW'' as we net-savvy
cool people say), the names Hernán and Hernando
are versions of Fernando (in Spanish) and Ferdinand
(English). One of the major sound shifts in Spanish was for eff to
become aitch. More about that at some other entry, maybe Spanish. For stuff about the
similar-sounding name Herman, see SN.

In 2006, 2007, and 2008, Kent Couch has flown east by lawn chair
from Bend, Oregon. The lawn chair was suspended by about 100
brightly-colored helium-filled party balloons, and carried east at
about 20 mph by prevailing winds.

The stunt, or the experience, is modeled on the 1982 flight of Larry
Walters, who was three miles above Los Angeles when he surprised an
airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed
``a guy in a lawn chair.'' Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating
air traffic rules.

Others have emulated Walters, but none has had a more appropriate name.

The dominant women's tennis player of the 1960's, although she was
Margaret Smith until 1966. At some point she was successfully courted
by a Mr. Barry Court. She must have liked the name. She retired in
1966, married and started a family. With Barry's encouragement, she
came back in 1970 and immediately won the Grand Slam (singles titles at
Wimbledon plus the U.S., French, and Australian Open tournaments) all
in that year.

On June 24, 1999, Ms. Creamer was working as a clerk at Bird World
Pet Shop (of Panama City, Florida), which also sells other animals than
birds. A coworker noticed that the
top was off one of the snake cages, and a man standing nearby was
acting strangely. The man, James Lawrence Collison, eventually got a
chance to tell police his side of the story. According to the report,
``he saw the snakes loose in the store and caught them and placed them
into his pocket for safekeeping until he could find an employee.''
Each of the snakes was about three or four feet long.

The coworker saw a boa constrictor's head pop out from under Collison's
shirt and called Ms. Creamer. Speaking to reporters later, she said
``it was hilarious. He kept saying he wasn't taking anything, but
those snakes were just moving around and one was under his shirt, and
he was doing all kinds of strange things and trying to keep it in
there.'' Then the snake in his trousers poked out of his pocket. It
was a milk snake. Ms. Creamer called 911.

But Mr. Collison was just a piker. On November 21, 2009, a man was
arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with 15 live lizards
strapped to his chest -- two geckos, two monitor lizards (monitor
lizards!) and 11 skinks.

Active in Historical Jesus (HJ)
research and a prominent member of the Jesus
Seminar. Author (among many other books) of The Cross that
Spoke, in which he reconstructed a ``Cross Gospel,'' supposed to
have preceded the passion narrative (PN)
found in Mk 14-16. He argued that this
Cross gospel was later incorporated into the canonical gospels and the
noncanonical gospel of Peter.

On a Monday in 2012, many hours after April Fools's Day had ended
even in Hawaii, US Pres. Obama made a number of surprising statements
regarding the Supreme Court's review of health care legislation he had
signed two years earlier. The following Wednesday and Thursday, his
press flunky (that's the neutral, official term, right?) Jay Carney
was besieged by White House reporters wanting to know how former
University of Chicago constitutional law instructor Obama's
unprecedented attack on the Supreme Court could be squared with a
minimal understanding of US constitutional law. Instead of simply
saying that The Great Orator was speaking without a teleprompter and
could therefore not be expected to be coherent, let alone correct, Yale
graduate Carney tried to argue that Mr. Obama clearly meant what he
clearly didn't say.

Finally, veteran CBS reporter Bill Plante offered the generous
suggestion that ``He made a mistake, and you can't admit it.'' At 74
years of age, Mr. Plante hasn't much to lose and can afford to scratch
thin skin. After some more Carney stammering and reporter ridicule,
Plante said ``You're standing up there twisting yourself in knots.''
At the end of the week, former White House reporter Joseph Curl wrote
a column for the Washington Times entitled ``Carney is twisting
himself into knots.'' I thought the juxtaposition of that title and
that byline was cute. I hope you did too.

Author of Anaïs Nin: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K.
Hall & Co., n.d.). Nin (1903-1977) was an unimportant scribbler
who was held in extremely high regard by enough people to be something
of a nuisance. She was best known for a preposterously long diary that
she published in six volumes after vast yet inadequate cutting.

GRAY Davis

The 37th governor of California, serving 1999 to 2003. Long-time
Democratic-party apparatchik. In the haze of history, he was Gov.
Jerry Brown's chief of staff. (That was
when the latter -- formally Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr. -- was
California's 34th governor. Jerry Brown also went on to become
California's 39th governor in 2011.) In Time magazine's
Viewpoint column (August 11, 2003), Joe Klein wrote:

The standing joke about Davis is that his personality reflects his
name, but Gray is darker than that.

(That's the only joke I can think of that contrasts two parameters of
color. See HSV.) Joe Klein also wrote a
best-selling book about a politician (Bill Clinton) who is not
colorless, although he (or who even) was described as the first black
president of the US. (I guess this eased the way for Mr.
O'Bamaugh, our first black Irish president.)
The book, published anonymously until the authorship was discovered by
text analysis, was entitled Primary Colors. That puns at least
a couple of ways, since the story focuses on Clinton's primary
campaign in 1992. Coincidentally or not, it was in the (2002) primary
that Gray Davis was darkest, spending a reported ten million dollars in
the Republican primary to help defeat the person who would
clearly have been the stronger opponent to Davis in the general
election (LA mayor Richard Riordan).

The tenth and last child of Jane Cook Davis and Samuel Davis.
First and last president of the Confederate States of America (CSA). (He had a cousin named Jefferson C.
Davis who played some less important role in Alabama history during
that time. It seems the family wasn't very thoughtful about naming.)
There was also a Jefferson Columbus Davis, not a relative, who during
the Civil War rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Union Army.
I'm going to have to sort some of this out eventually.

It was not uncommon to give the name Finis to the last child in
a family. Sometimes I imagine it was given by mistake. Sometimes the
mother's death in childbirth certified the name. Jane Davis survived
the birth of her son Jefferson in 1808 and lived until 1845. But she
was born in 1760 some time, so the name was not unreasonably chosen.
Jefferson Davis (named after Thomas Jefferson, of course) dropped the
Finis in his twenties.

Dr. Kevin M. DE COCK

De Cock was Director of the
HIV/AIDS
department of the World Health Organization in December 2006, when
exciting news about circumcision was announced. In
studies being
conducted in Kenya and Uganda, it was found that (male)
circumcision cut new HIV infections in heterosexual men by about 50%,
confirming an earlier South African study that
found a 60% decrease. All three studies were cut short when it was
decided that it would be unethical to deny the clear benefits of
circumcision to the uncircumcised study participants (the control
groups).

A specialist in infectious diseases, De Cock's professional
publications had often concerned condoms to some degree. However,
until news reports quoted him in connection with the circumcision
studies (in a
BBC item: results a ``significant scientific advance,'' but ``[m]en
must not consider themselves protected'') he had never achieved public
prominence that was ironic commentary on the entirety of his two-part
surname.

Before his appointment to the WHO position,
in
March 2006, De Cock had severed, sorry, served for six years as
Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) in Kenya. Thus, it may be that he
has some professional connection with US
NIH-sponsored studies in Kenya
and Uganda. I just don't know yet. However, the nomen-est-omen
significance of the results already obtained is so striking that we've
decided to cut short further investigation and release this sub-entry
now.

Charles DE GAULle

He had a lot of gaul, and he ruled Gaul. (Some, possibly even he,
thought he liberated it.)

Tom DELAY

In October 2005, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), then recently resigned from
the post of majority leader of the US House, was indicted on charges of
money laundering in 2002. In 2008 the DA who originally brought the
charges retired. The case finally came to trial in 2010. He was
convicted in November and sentenced in January 2011 to 3 years in
prison and 10 years' probation. As of January 17, 2011, he's out on
bail pending appeal.

Giacomo DELLA CHIESA

Della Chiesa is a surname meaning `of the church' in
Italian, and Giacomo Della Chiesa served as Benedict XV (1914-1922).

CECIL B. DeMille

As a given name in modern times, Cecil represents a transferred use
of the surname of a noble family that rose to prominence in England
during the sixteenth century. That Cecil is an Anglicization of
the Welsh given name Scissylt, possibly a Celtic form of the
LatinSextilius, from the
Sextus, `sixth.' (Back and forth between given and family
names. Sextilius was a gentilicium: a family or clan name [see
tria nomina]. It was presumably
derived from Sextus, a given name (praenomen) for the
sixth boy.) Sextilis, on the other hand, was the name of the
month preceding September (Latin for `September,' in case you
were wondering) until 27 BC, when it was renamed mensis Augustus
in honor of Augustus by Augustus.

None of that is of any interest, which is why I wanted to get it out of
the way first. Cecil was also occasionally used as a given name
in the Middle Ages. In that time, it represented the English form of
the Latin Caecilius, an old Roman gentilicium. The popularity
of this name in Medieval Europe is probably due to the fact that it was
borne by a minor saint of the third century, a friend of St. Cyprian.

More to the point, however, Caecilius was originally derived
from the byname Caecus, meaning `blind.' Cecil B. DeMille was
one of the most successful filmmakers of all time so far.

A reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper of Melbourne,
Australia. The Sun published his greatest scoop just two days before
Valentine's Day 2004. But this part of the glossary is just bursting,
so why don't you read all about it at the Heidelberg United entry?

Dictionary of GENETICS

I don't know if it's because of the meaning of the word
genetics or for some other reason, but the following can't be
mere coincidence. A book entitled Dictionary of Genetics
(``including terms used in cytology, animal breeding and evolution,''
which I count as only the colon of the title) was published in 1948; it
was by Robert L. Knight. A book entitled A Dictionary of
Genetics came out in 1968; it was by Robert C. King. I'm sure if
only King hadn't gone on doing revised editions, one of the
appropriately qualified Robert Kaisers would have been willing to do
the honors for 1988.

Scott DIRECTOR

He has worked as an actor and as an
ADR artist, and he is credited with
composing the original music for
Little Boy
Blues, a 2005 short.

Stephen W. DIRECTOR

Engineering Dean at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
(UMI) as of fall 1996.

Rose Friedman, widow of Milton Friedman and a like-minded economist,
is the former Rose Director.

An accountant, bank auditor for the Perry County Bank in
Perryville, Ark. Participant in a Dec. 14, 1990 afternoon meeting at
which he and the bank owner, Robert M. Hill, made an illegally large
contribution to William J. Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign and
urged (this is the point where most readers fall asleep) Clinton to
appoint Hill's partner in the bank, Herby Branscum, Jr., to the
Arkansas State Highway Commission. That appointment was made, and on
July 2, 1996, Mr. Dollar was a witness in a trial of Mr. Hill and Mr.
Branscum. They were not charged with bribery, but certain
kinds of fraud and misappropriation. The defendants were acquitted of
the most serious charges (conspiracy, misapplication of bank funds, and
making false entries to bank records), and the jury hung on the rest.
A mistrial was declared on the latter charges, and a retrial was not
sought.

(In retrospect, this looks like a possible instance of prosecutorial
abuse. The case in which the charges were brought was one that
prosecutors in the office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr stumbled
across in 1994 while focused on other issues. It was always clear that
charges were threatened and brought in order to put pressure on the
defendants to cooperate with Starr's investigation; prosecutors were
always eager for a plea bargain. Of course, investigators' guesses
about facts they cannot prove are part of what they use to decide
whether witnesses are cooperating.)

Residents of Tokyo, feeling secure from enemy attack, did not take
seriously the air raid drill that coincidentally had been scheduled for
that morning. The drill ended at noon, about the time that the
Doolittle party arrived. From the ground, many assumed the planes were
part of the drill, until the bombs exploded.

In terms of damage to military targets, the raid did indeed do little.
In terms of morale on the Allied side, and fear and misjudgment on the
enemy side, it did a great deal. Doolittle, decorated and promoted,
went on to do a little acting in other theaters of the war.

The story of the raid is told in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, by
Capt. Ted W. Lawson (Random House, 1943). The first paragraph reads

I helped bomb Tokyo on the Doolittle raid of April 18, 1942. I crashed
in the China Sea. I learned the meaning of the term ``United Nations''
from men and women whose language I couldn't speak. I watched a buddy
of mine saw off my left leg. And finally I got home to my wife after
being flown, shipped and carried around the world.

(For a similar contemporary use of ``United Nations,'' see the VOA entry.)

Oh, alright -- he goes by Robert D. Drain. He's a
U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge. In his court in Lower Manhattan on
October 11, 2005, proceedings began regarding the ``petition for
relief'' of Michigan auto parts maker Delphi Corp. (spun off by
GM a few years before) under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy laws.
We have more on unusual judge names.

A humorist who makes comics. But he doesn't draw them. Other
people drew them -- mostly not as comics but as non-comic
illustrations. Drew only draws them from an archive, adding
cartoon-balloon content (sometimes adding cartoon balloons too) to make
them funny. (I just have to
link well; I don't have
to be clear. Apologies to Don Henley.)

This item might work better if Drew had stopped not drawing comics.
Someone please let me know when that happens.

Duke Nukem Forever is the sequel to the video game (a first-person
shooter) Duke Nukem 3D. Forever is almost how long it took to appear.
Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996, and Duke Nukem Forever was announced in
1997. Normally, one might have expected the sequel to come out by
2000. It was available to play at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo (in
Seattle, Sept. 3-5). PAX 2010 had already
sold out its 150,000 or so admission badges when the announcement was
made. There was a very long line of people waiting to try out DNF.
(Fill in your own joke here: ____________________forever.) DNF will
go on sale in 2011.

Wrote a very popular mathematics handbook; first edition 1926,
second edition 1941. I have before me the third edition, 1951: 56
chapters, 1041 sections, xx+822 pp., revised and edited by Richard Dull,
Raymond's son, partly based on material developed by his late father.
The book is entitled Mathematics for Engineers. Here is the
first paragraph of the first edition preface:

This treatise on mathematics has been prepared primarily
for engineers. In this we would include (1) engineers who want a quick
and convenient reference, (2) engineers who have grown somewhat rusty
in their mathematics, and (3) engineers who feel the need of a text for
the study of mathematics.

John DYE

He died, January 10, 2011. Of course, we all expect to be dying
someday, but he was only 47. He was an actor, but Dye was his surname
at birth. And he is best remembered for his role on the TV show
``Touched By an Angel,'' where he played the angel of death Andrew.

JOSH EARNEST

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary, as of May 2013.

Peter EARNEST

Executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington,
D.C., as of May 2013.

Ben EAST

Coauthor, with Olive A. Fredrickson, of Silence of the
North. The book is the story of Fredrickson's very difficult life
in the Arctic wilderness. It was made into
a movie of the same
name that was released in 1981.

Elizabeth C. ECONOMY

Economy is (as of this writing, June 2010, and since at least
2006) a Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies at the US
Council on Foreign Relations, and has
published on environmental and development issues.

Bob EDWARDS

Bob Edwards is an NPR Radio program host, and he's written a couple
of books about other radio personalities: Fridays with Red: A Radio
Friendship (2000), and Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of
Broadcast Journalism (2004). Red Barber was born Walter Lanier
Barber. Somebody please suggest an edifying radio personality subject
to Mr. Edwards.

I guess that Atom is more likely to be the Armenian form of
Anthony than to have any relation to atom, from the Greek meaning uncuttable. (Atom Egoyan was
born in Egypt to Armenian parents, and
raised in Western Canada.) He is a director,
scriptwriter, and actor, sometimes all three in the same movie. Like
the early Woody Allen minus the jokes. Like the later Woody Allen. A
lot of Egoyan's movies are autobiographical and feature his wife
(sometimes playing his wife, as in ``Calendar''); ``A Portrait of
Arshile'' features him, his wife, and his son. Some of his movies are
entitled ``an Ego Production.'' Woody Allen's movies used to feature
his current love interest, often as his on-screen love interest.

A professional translator who attended Oxford and Moscow
Universities and has worked as a translator and teacher in the USSR,
US, and Kenya. As of 1998 he was working in Zimbabwe. As a verb, the
word English means to translate into English, as English did
many of Gogol's works (including Dead Souls: A Poem, mentioned
at the Russia entry).

James F. ENGLISH

A professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

CLARK KENT Ervin

He was the inspector general of the US Department of Homeland
Security from 2003 to 2004 (and of the US State Department from 2001 to
2003). As of 2009 he is the director of the Aspen Institute's
homeland security program.

Home of Brenda Phenis. She and seven others were arrested on
August 21, 2001, on charges of rigging a promotional game sponsored by
McDonald's. The scam was organized by a security employee at the
company that produced the tickets and game pieces for McDonald's. The
conspiracy would recruit shills to pose as random winners and kick
back most of their winnings to the organizers. McDonald's (which was
involved only to the extent of cooperating with the FBI in catching the bad guys) ran various games
over six years, with prizes ranging from a
free drink or order of fries to cars,
vacations, and ``a million dollars'' (over time) in cash. The games were a great success
for McDonald's in a mature, saturated market (there may be something on
this at the KFC entry), typically giving sales
a temporary 5% fillip each time. The games were based on familiar
themes such as the 1996 Summer Olympics, the TV program Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire, and the board game Monopoly. ``Go To
Jail.'' Eventually, at least 21 co-conspirators were charged, but they
were scattered around the country to make things look legit, and I'm
not aware that they came from places that were so aptly named.

Jonny FAIRPLAY

This is a television actor whose real name is Jon Dalton. He
appeared in the 2003 CBS reality show ``Survivor: Pearl Islands.''
Casting actors in a ``reality show'' would not appear to be strictly
according to Hoyle, but I guess it's okay because they're real actors
(as opposed to ordinary people, who wouldn't be qualified to appear in
a reality show because they're not real actors -- they're only acting
like actors playing the role of ordinary people).

Fairplay earned his place in this glossary at the Fox Reality Channel's
Really (yes, really) Awards on October 2, 2007. Danny Bonaduce
(age 48) was on stage when Fairplay (33) walked on uninvited and made a
``derogatory statement,'' according to the police report. Fairplay
jumped on Bonaduce and ``wrapped his arms and legs around the suspect
and thrust his pelvis into the suspect's body'' while the audience
booed. The ``suspect'' was Bonaduce, who threw Fairplay over his
shoulders.

Fairplay was a survivor but he landed on his face, and he said later
that he underwent 2½ hours of dental surgery. Poor baby! He said
he had only given Bonaduce a hug, one of his signature moves as a
performer. Moves in what kinds of movies, I wonder. The
DA's office declined to prosecute, citing
insufficient evidence of intent to injure, and the fact that Fairplay
``initiated contact and acted offensively.'' Bonaduce's ``actions fell
within the realm of self-defense,'' according to Deputy DA Jeffrey
Boxer, who needs another apposite turn in the public eye to earn a
glossary subentry of his own.
Why is the WWE sitting on its hands?

Bonaduce was a child star on ``The Partridge Family.'' In 2005 he
starred in the reality show ``Breaking Bonaduce,'' but that's not how
this one worked out.

Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University
of Chicago. Faraone is Italian for `Pharaoh.' As of this date (2001.02.23),
Christopher A. Faraone is chair of the Classics Department.

Stop me before I adopt again! Fourteen children, not counting
Woody. (Mía is `mine'
[belonging to me] in Spanish and, give
or take an accent, in some other Romance languages as well.)

FAULSTICK and Son

A business that does septic-system work. (I saw a billboard
advertisement for them, traveling southbound on SR-33 in Pennsylvania
in November 2009.) The adjective faul in German is a cognate of
the English word foul, with a similar range of meanings. The
noun Stick is a dialectal form of Stück, meaning
`piece.'

[Yeah, there's a verb sticken usually meaning `embroider,'
cognate with English stitch. Note that stecken (meaning
`put'), the obvious cognate of the English verb stick, is (at
least now) a regular verb, so there are no stem changes into
stick....)

Here is something I read in The Red Orchestra: The Anatomy of
the Most Successful Spy Ring of World War
II, by Gilles Perrault {tr. Peter Wiles} (Simon & Schuster,
1969), p. 6.

By 1929 there were three thousand rabcors [workers operating as
amateur press correspondents] in France,
some of them employed in state arsenals or in factories where war
materials were manufactured. The ostensible purpose of their
contributions to the Communist press was to denounce the poor working
conditions to which they were subjected, but they could hardly do so
without supplying bits and pieces of information about the work itself.
The more revealing articles were never published. They were passed to
the Soviet embassy in Paris, which forwarded
them to Moscow. If a given rabcor seemed well informed on a
subject of really worthwhile interest, an agent would call and question
him until a complete picture had been built up.

This highly profitable organization functioned with undisturbed
efficiency for three whole years. In February, in 1932, a denunciation
was laid before the French police. Despite this lucky break, it took
the superintendent in charge of the case -- a man with the disquieting
name of Faux-Pas-Bidet--more than six months to dismantle the network.
His reports are unsparing in their praise of the spies he was
endeavoring to track down. ...

Now, as the author of the French original
well understood, Faux-Pas-Bidet is more than a merely
disquieting name. An approximate English equivalent might be
`Misstep-Chamberpot.' It is an exceedingly unlikely sort of name.
Author Perrault seems to suggest that this is the person's real name,
possibly his hyphenated last name. If he knew the real name and
deliberately withheld it, that would be a bit disingenuous. If he
didn't know the real name, then it probably means that his comments on
the reports are second-hand. If he knew that this is the man's real
name, then it's hard to square with what Trotsky wrote in his 1930
autobiography (Moia zhizn), recalling events of 1916 and 1918.

Here is an English translation by, umm, it's not clear. It was
published by Pathfinder Press in 1970, and it has an introduction
by Joseph Hansen -- an admiring reminiscence of his days on L. D. Trotsky's staff during the last years
in exile in Coyoacán, Mexico, with a few little jabs at
Trotsky's biographer Isaac Deutscher. Trotsky lived another eleven
years after finishing his autobiography, and he had a secretariat that
regularly translated his work in a sequence of multiple drafts
critiqued in detail by Trotsky (see the obvious entry), so perhaps the translation
was a team effort by his staff.

For much of his life, Trotsky was an inconvenient foreigner seeking
safety and freedom away from a Russian dictatorial government (Tsarist,
which he sought to overthrow, or Soviet, which he at one point had at
least the second-greatest role in preserving). In 1916, Trotsky was
dumped at the Spanish border by the French
police. He traveled to Madrid, where he was soon arrested. One is
struck by the bourgeois
courtesy of the French and Spanish police that L.D. describes. Like a
number of other communists who suffered at the hands of the GPU, he
also used the old Tsarist secret police as a standard of incivility
against which to castigate others by invidious comparison. On the way
from Madrid to Cadiz, he asked the agents escorting him how they had
come to capture him so quickly. They readily volunteered that a
telegram from Paris had alerted them to a dangerous anarchist
(sic) in their country. Trotsky writes

In all this the chief of the so-called
juridical police, Bidet-``Fauxpas,'' played an important part. He was
the heart and soul of my shadowing and expulsion; he was
distinguishable from his colleagues only by his exceptional rudeness
and malice. He tried to speak to me in a tone that even the Czar's
officers of the secret police never allowed themselves to assume. My
conversations with him always ended in explosions. As I was leaving
him, I would feel a look of hate behind my back. At the prison
meeting with Gabier [a French socialist L.D. met while under house
arrest in Madrid], I expressed my conviction that my arrest had been
prearranged by Bidet-``Fauxpas,'' and the name, started by my lucky
stroke, circulated through the Spanish press.

Less than two years later, the fates willed me
an entirely unexpected satisfaction at M. Bidet's expense. In the
summer of 1918, a telephone call to the War Commissariat informed me
that Bidet--the Thunderer, Bidet!--was under arrest in one of the
Soviet prisons. I could not believe my ears. But it seemed that the
French government had put him on the staff of the military mission to
engage in spying and conspiracy in the Soviet republic, and he had been
so careless as to get caught. One could hardly ask for a greater
satisfaction from Nemesis, especially if one adds the fact that Malvy,
the French minister of the Interior who signed the order for my
expulsion, was himself soon after expelled from France by the
Clémenceau government on a charge of pacifist intrigues. What a
concurrence of circumstances, as if intended for a film plot!

When Bidet was brought to me at the
Commissariat, I could not recognize him at first. The Thunderer had
become transformed into an ordinary mortal, and a seedy one at that.
I looked at him in amazement.

``mais oui, monsieur,'' he said as he
bowed his head, ``c'est moi.''

Yes, it was Bidet. But how had it happened?
I was genuinely astonished. Bidet spread out his hands philosophically,
and with the assurance of a police stoic, remarked ``C'est la marche
des évènements.'' Exactly--a magnificent formula!
There floated before my eyes the figure of the dark fatalist who had
conducted me to San Sebastian: ``There is no freedom of choice;
everything is predetermined.''

``Alas, I must admit it, Mr. People's
Commissary, sorry as I am. I have thought often of it as I sat in my
cell. It does a man good sometimes,'' he added significantly, ``to get
acquainted with prison from the inside. But I still hope my Paris
behavior will not have any unpleasant consequences for me.''

I reassured him.

``When I return to France, I will change my
occupation.''

``Will you Monsieur Bidet? On revient
toujours à ses premiers amours.'' (I have described this
scene to my friends so often that I remember our dialogue as if it took
place yesterday.) Later Bidet was allowed to go back to France as one
of the exchange prisoners. I have no information as to his subsequent
fate.

(At this point, L.D. returns to continue the story of his passage
through Spain. I'll mention some of this at the Cuba entry,
eventually.)

Cecil FIELDER

In his
entire
major-league career in the US, Cecil (pronounced with a short-e, as
in Cecil B. DeMille) Fielder played first base in 905 games, third base
in 7, and second base in 2. Well, I guess that at least counts as
fielding. He was a designated hitter in 535 games, and he did play in
the outfield in one game for Toronto. He left Toronto after four
seasons to play the 1989 season with the Tigers of Hanshin in Japan's
Central League. For the next few seasons he played with the Tigers of
Detroit. Cecil's son Prince has been a first-baseman and occasional
designated hitter in his own major-league career. (He's in the NL, so
opportunities to be DH are limited.)

Blake Fielder-CIVIL

One-time husband of troubled singer (that was the standard
description) Amy Winehouse. I haven't
followed his story very closely, but when I first wrote this bit, in
early February 2008, he was in jail awaiting trial. He had first been
charged with intentionally inflicting grievous
bodily harm on pub landlord James King, June 20, 2007. In November
2007 Fielder-Civil was arrested on a charge of trying to pervert the
course of justice in that case. (He was alleged to have offered King
money to drop the allegation against him and flee the country. Reports
varied regarding whether King had accepted the bribe. In the US, at
least, it is often relatively easy to earn conviction on such ancillary
charges, and the penalties can be more severe than those for the
original crime, even if there was no original crime. Just ask Martha
Stewart.) I don't know what ever came of those charges.

There were no charges against Fielder-Civil or against Winehouse
arising from their alleged violent fights in August 2007, but there was
periodic drama afterwards. When Amy Winehouse died in July 2011, he
was in prison at the beginning of a 32 month sentence for burglary and
possession of an imitation firearm. He was denied release to attend
the funeral.

He was released at the end of July 2012, and a few days later overdosed
and was hospitalized, spending more than a week in a coma. His mom
claimed that he hadn't been able to have his phone in prison, and that
on his return home he came across an old handset with messages from
Amy, including one in which she said she'd like to be godmother to
his son Jack -- born in spring 2011. This, his mom claimed (according
to the Daily Mail, anyway) pushed him over the edge. It just goes to
show what I've always said: voicemail is the source of all the trouble
in the world. But the thing that strikes me about this whole knot of
people is how family-oriented they are. I mean that all most
sincerely. Or almost sincerely. Their parents are always being
quoted in the tabloids about how it was someone else's fault, and now
we have this godmother thing.

It turns out that the coma that got Blake hospitalized was only due to
an alleged drug overdose, and he came out of it. He gave an
interview to The Sun after being released (from the hospital,
that is). He said that he had been relieved to learn from the
coroner's report that Amy hadn't died of a drug overdose, because it
was he who had introduced her to drugs. I'm sure he meant
alleged drugs.

Bruce FIELDS

Manager of Toledo farm team (triple-A) who was named hitting coach
of the Detroit Tigers on Oct. 9, 2002.

The Food Network star, known for his creative facial hair, over-the-top
personality and love of diner food, was attending a bash at New
Orleans's Second Line Studios when bouncers denied him entry beyond the
velvet ropes, Us Weekly reports.

Fieri responded by causing a scene, bystanders said. He was then
ejected from the venue.
...
``He didn't have the right bracelet, and nobody in New Orleans knows
who anyone is,'' one partygoer explained.

The Italian surname Fieri is simply the plural of the surname
Fiero. In principle, the plural is supposed to indicate a noble
family, but the frequency of -i names is suspicious.
The word fiero is cognate with the English word `fierce.'
That's also what it means in Spanish.
In Italian it means that and more. The principal senses now seem to
have to do with pride. It means either `proud' or `disdainful.'
Ultimately, these f-words are derived from the
Latinferus, meaning `wild animal.'
(Source also of the English word feral.) For something about
f-words describing not-very-wild animals, see the ferrous entry.

A car sold in the 1984-88 model years. It was a mid-engine sports
car with a lightweight, magnesium-alloy engine. The car had a famous
tendency to catch fire. You might have thought, after the disaster
that race cars had with lightweight magnesium-alloy wheels, that a
lesson would have been learned. I just wish I hadn't just told you the
real meaning of the word fiero above.

David FIGMAN

A food inspector in NYC. An article on food inspection in the May
22, 1969, New York Times, on page
49, quoted Weems L. Clevenger, director of the New York district of the
FDA, to the effect that 65% of all food
imported by the US entered through the port of New York City. The article included a picture
with this caption: ``Peter Giambalvo, holding jar, and David Figman,
drawing samples from barrel, prepare to make test of olives newly
imported from Spain.'' The scene is on a quay with rows of barrels on
their sides; the men are wearing hardhats but no safety glasses. From
the splatter on the side of their barrel, it seems part of the test was
sqeezing the olives to bursting. (Well dammit, I'm sure on some other
days he tests figs. I don't give a f... if you believe it or not!)

Dr. Bernard FISHER and Dr. Roger POISSON

According to a report in the New York
Times, 4 April 1994, (page A12) Dr.
Fisher is [was?] the world's authority on the treatment of breast
cancer. Someone found something fishy in the work of Poisson, and
Fisher was removed from the headship of his study group amid
accusations that he suppressed evidence of scientific fraud (falsified
data) by Dr. Poisson. A cause célébrée in Canada.

Need I point out that poisson is French for `fish'? Of course not, that
would be an insult to your learnedness, your sophistication.

Florida is director of the University of Toronto's Martin
Prosperity Institute. He was interviewed by Kurt Badenhausen (German
for `bath houses'; I hope he wasn't taken to the cleaners) for
Forbes. The title of the resulting article was ``You Are Where
You Live.''

J.E. FORCE

Coeditor with S. Hutton of Newton and Newtonianism: New
Studies (#188 in the series Archives Internationales D'Histoire
des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas,
from Kluwer Academic Publishers).

From time to time I have looked for a good pretext for putting
something in this glossary about former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, and as
you will see below, I still haven't found one. But this is an
emergency, so we're temporarily lowering our editorial standards.

In May of 2014, Rob Ford was still mayor of Toronto, but was in rehab.
He was either in rehab for an alcohol problem that leads him to make
mistakes like smoking crack cocaine while someone takes video of the
event, although he doesn't have a crack addiction, or else he was in
rehab for various addictions. His stories vary in each retelling
-- not because he's trying to put a bad picture in the best light
possible given the evidence that has already come to light, but because
-- because he's a natural-born entertainer, that's it.

Anyway, on May 20, Ontario Provincial Police
stopped his SUV (hey -- an acronym:
gimme credit). It was a black Escalade: a Cadillac! An
arrest was made on charges of ``impaired driving and driving with more
than 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.'' That is
more loosely described as ``0.08% blood alcohol
concentration'' [by weight], since the specific gravity of blood is
only slightly above that of water -- typically no more than about 1.06.
The overformal description of the alcohol concentration is in striking
contrast to the informal ``driving and driving'' locution, which is
unusual in legal language.

Now where were we before getting off on that interesting tangent? Oh
yeah -- the SUV. The driver arrested for drunk-driving the Ford
Cadillac
was Lee Anne McRobb, apparently someone the charming Ford met while in
rehab. Ford himself was reportedly not at the wheel or even in the
vehicle at the time. A day later, Rob's brother Doug Ford said he'd
never heard of the woman before, and that he was having trouble getting
in touch with his brother. However, McRobb was never charged with
theft of the car. (I'm not saying she should've been!)

Reporters also spoke with Rob Ford's lawyer, whom they surely have on
speed-dial. The lawyer, Dennis Morris, was evidently giddy with relief
at the novelty of hearing about lawbreaking his client was connected
with but not guilty of: ``This is all news to me. I know
nothing about it, but I wouldn't know why I should, because he's not
involved in any way!'' I see no reason to disbelieve that his further
elaboration of these comments was rendered unintelligible by his
giggles.

Doug Ford is not just the then-mayor's brother. He is also a
T.O. councillor and the campaign manager
for his brother. The emergency I mentioned earlier involves Doug.

As one or two of my fellow Americans might be aware, later today
(October 19, 2015), a federal election will be held in Canada. Prime
Minister Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party, is
campaigning with Rob Ford. This would be something like Jeb Bush
reaching out to Donald Trump for his support and the votes of ``Trump
Nation,'' if Trump were a notorious crack-head instead of a notorious
every-day-is-a-bad-hair-day-head. (Yes -- reaching out. Harper held
the Fords tight at arm's length. A cynical balancing act. I'm not
trying to be judgmental or anything, okay? I don't have a Labrador
retriever in this fight.)

Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau leads the Liberal Party, whom polls (which
history suggests are more accurate than a coin flip) tout to come out
on top in today's contest. Justin's famous dad overcame baldness, but
Justin's own hair has also been in the news in the final days of the
campaign. No time to discuss that almost equally important matter now.

This glossary is many people's main source of news about Canada, so it
was imperative that I further crush the following recently broken news.
In a CTV News interview on October 15, Doug Ford recordedly said the
following:

You know something, I'm tough on crime too and I think it's essential.
I know one thing, it wasn't Stephen Harper sitting around a table
smoking a joint at a dinner party like Justin Trudeau was, so I find it
pretty hypocritical.

I am torn on this. On the one hand, I think it's wonderful that he
thought of using the word ``hypocritical.'' Also, the idea of a single
individual ``sitting around a table'' is very girthful, more like Rob
or Doug than Stephen or Justin. And maybe he did suggest, equivocally,
that ``crime [is] essential.'' I'll give him the benefit of the doubt
on that one. On the other hand, Doug's use of the word ``like'' is
just another nail in the coffin of ``as.'' Well, at least everyone had
a good laugh.

A future episode of this entry will mention that Henry Ford founded the
original Cadillac company.

Biologist who gathered DNA evidence
(Y-chromosomes) all-but proving that Thomas Jefferson knew his slave
Sally Hemmings extremely intimately. This research was published in
Science two days before the midterm US elections of 1998, which
were widely interpreted as a referendum on actions taken and to be
taken regarding President William Jefferson Clinton, who had
been demonstrated, using DNA evidence, to have known one of the White
House interns extremely intimately.

Another of her nicknames, besides Mega Fox, is Foxy Megan. In 2008
she was voted ``the sexiest woman in the world'' by readers (perhaps
the term is meant loosely) of FHM, despite
having a literary but ugly tattoo on her right shoulder. (It reads
``We Will All Laugh At Gilded Butterflies.'') Fox is her maiden name;
maybe the next fox is a cousin.

Around 11 pm on Wednesday, October 1, 2008, Tommy Fox was driving
home from his job in Dover, Tennessee, when a beautiful red fox ran out
in front of his (Tommy's) GMCJimmy and got run over. Tommy got out and
picked up the fox, figuring he'd take it home and cut off the tail to
keep as a souvenir. He'd have been better advised to perform this
operation in the field, or to have been driving an honest pick-up
instead of an SUV.

As he drove on, Tommy Fox heard the fox reviving in the back seat. He
looked around for a way to keep the fox from biting him, and as he was
thus distracted, his SUV crossed the centerline, went into a ditch, and
flipped over (and stopped). One Fox suffered minor injuries and was
treated at the scene; another fox was found dead in the SUV. I guess
we know who was wearing a seat belt.

A professor at the University of Edinburgh, he edited The New
Oxford Companion to Literature in French (1995).

Chuck FREEBY

The surname is pronounced identically with ``freebie.'' Mr. Freeby
is involved in charitable fundraising through raffles and auctions in
the Mishawaka-South Bend area of Indiana, serving as a public spokesman
and auctioneer, among other things. In March 2008, for example, he was
involved in House Raffle 2008, a benefit to raise money for the Healthy
Family Center and Women's Care Centers of the
SJRMC. Well sure, you have to buy a
ticket. But if you win, it's as close to free as you're likely to get.

In German, the verb freuen means `to make happy,' and there
are various related words. Die Freude is `the joy.' (The
surname is related, but in a nonstandard dialect or an archaic
spelling.) Freud, of course, tried to help people whose principal
complaint was ~ sowieso ~ unhappiness.

(FWIW, Sigmund is a popular old name meaning `defender of victory.'
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but the folks who came up with
it are no longer around to explain what they had in mind. I imagine
one could come up with obscure connections to psychoanalysis, or with
connections to the obscurity of psychoanalysis, but I won't. There
comes a point where, if you're willing to accept any tenuous
connection, then the fact of a connection existing becomes
insignificant. It's like the freshman exercise of discovering the
phallic symbolism of everything that isn't perfectly spherical: if
everything except a basketball is ``phallic,'' then ``phallic'' is
meaningless.)

FREUDENSTADT

A city in the southern German state of
Baden-Württemberg. The city name can
be translated as `Happy Town.' (See FREUD
above.) On March 21, 2008, a woman driving on a street in the
Freudenstadt area
skidded in the
snow and rammed a tree. The car was totaled, but the woman walked
away unhurt. News reports credited her own homemade birthday cake with
cushioning her landing and saving her life. As a bonus, I imagine, she
doesn't have to eat the cake. News reports listed her age as 26, but
in the circumstances, they should at least have clarified whether she
had just turned 26, or was still 26 going on 27. Police also credited
the airbag with helping to protect her. I want to see pictures of
this. Where was she carrying the cake?

This is a German name formed, as was typical of Germanic given
names, as a compound of two parts. The -rich, related to
English -ric and -rick, and Scandinavian -rik, and
means `ruler' of some sort. It's cognate with German Reich
and reich (`rich'), and other words you can think of, and is
probably derived from Latinrex
(`king') or Celtic rix or both. The first part is related to
the modern German word Frieden, which means peace, so the name
appears to mean something like `ruler of peace.' In fact, both
etymologically and historically it means something a bit different.

The modern German word Frieden comes from the Old High German
word fridu, which meant something like `protection or shelter
from armed attack.' Consider the kind of world, 1500 years ago, where
it was handy to have a compact word for this concept. Are we better
off now? Give me 500 words by tomorrow. Anyway, the only extant
English words related to this root seem to be belfry (originally
a kind of shelter for besiegers or besieged) and afraid (from
the cognate Late Latin fridus, fridum). (The Latin word
pax, similarly, meant not only
`peace,' in various senses of the English word, but also `pact.'

The irony, if you chose to see it that way, is that this name that (now
at least) suggests peace was popularized by the highly successful Holy
Roman Emperors Friedrich I Barbarossa
(there's some stuff about him at the linked entry -- you just gotta
drill down, as the suits say) and his
grandson Friedrich II. There is a certain aptness in the name,
however, because international politics in the Middle Ages was a game
of shifting alliances and frequent treacheries, and what the alliances
offered and the treacheries withdrew was often protection from armed
attack. The first two Kaisers held the title 1154-1190 and 1220-1250.
Both Friedrichs played the game quite successfully, and the subsequent
popularity of the name Friedrich in German, and its adoption in other
languages, is laid to their success.

A couple who were fined $300 for hosting Bible studies in their
home without obtaining a special permit. They live in the city of San
Juan Capistrano -- in storied Orange County, California, of all places.
A religious legal non-profit group, the Pacific Justice Institute
(PJI) has taken up their cause, saying the
fine was a violation of religious freedom. Fromm (in German,
like frum in Yiddish) means `pious.'

Cathy Salcedo, a spokeswoman for the city, stressed that local
authorities were not trying to prohibit home Bible study, but that the
Fromms had transformed a residential area. Their Bible study group
meets on Sunday mornings and Thursday afternoons with up to 50 persons,
``with impacts on the residential neighborhood on street access and
parking.'' Brad Dacus, an attorney for PJI, said the Fromms live in a
semi-rural area and have not caused any parking problems for neighbors.

David G. FUBINI

A director (as of 2006) of McKinsey & Company, Inc., United
States/Boston Office. Fubini's specialty is post-merger integration.
He's done a lot of this as leader of the firm's Worldwide Post Merger
Practice, so he's been involved in multiple integrations. He must have
considered interchanging the order of integration.

The famous mathematician Guido Fubini (1879-1943) is known for theorems
about multiple integration. Specifically, he proved theorems
concerning the conditions under which interchanging the order of
integration does not change the result of the (multiple) integration.

Ann M. FUDGE

Executive vice president of Kraft Foods, Inc. (as of April 2000),
and president of the company's Maxwell House and Post Division. The
Maxwell House Division sells Maxwell House, Yuban, and General Foods
International Coffees brands; the Post Division offers Grape Nuts,
Shredded Wheat, Honey Bunches of Oats, and Pebbles (that's a brand
of cereal, not the contents, I'm pretty sure). Through a licensing
agreement, Maxwell House also markets and distributes Starbucks
brand coffee in grocery stores.

On April 17, 2000, she delivered Skidmore College's Harder Lecture
(named after F. William Harder).

The furlong was supposed to represent a reasonable distance for an
animal to pull a plow before taking a rest, and hence is a fairly
appropriate measure for horseraces.

Sandra GAL

In November 2011, GolfDigest.com inaugurated an oddly unisex
Hottest Golfer contest. The selection process was based on some sort
of match play. Unlike the LPGA or, for
practical purposes, the PGA,
this contest was apparently not sexually segregated. Gal, 26, won the
final playoff in January 2012 to become the Hottest Golfer. She won by
a large margin -- won it running away, you might say, but for this
sport and this context I'd say she won it ``walking away.'' Sandra Gal
had won her first LPGA title in the 2011 Kia Classic.

She actively recruited voters on Twitter for Golf Digest's contest.
That seems pretty unsportsmanlike to me. A downright Mulligan,
frankly. Mr. Rickie Fowler, her competition in the final round, seems
to have taken it in stride.

FWIW, Gal is German, and not Gal is not an ordinary word in the
German language (but see gal and
GAL).

[Huerta comes from the Latinhortus, `garden.' The gender flip was presumably intentional --
it's a standard way to indicate a slight shift in meaning. The male
gender of the Latin original is preserved in the Spanish huerto,
`orchard.' It's not certain whether the word orchard itself is
also derived from hortus (as the first element in a compound
with the Germanic yard).]

Morton S. ``Mort'' GARSON

In 1974, he composed the electronic music score for the 18th Annual
Grammy Award-winning Best Children's Recording of The Little
Prince narrated by Richard Burton. Okay, ``the little prince'' is
more of a diminutive man than a boy (garç), exactly, but
the following tips it in, since garson is sort of an English spelling
of the French word.

Garson was born (1924) in New Brunswick, and that is the only province
of Canada that has (since 1969) bilingualism written into its
provincial consitution. Roughly a third of 'Wickers are Francophones,
and New Brunswick has the closest balance between English and French of
any Canadian province or territory. In all the rest, French or
(usually) English is overwhelmingly more common than the other. (This
is true somewhat differently in Nunavut: a large minority speak English
at home and a majority speak an Inuit language. Or ``speaks,'' if you
prefer.)

An education professor at the University of Wisconsin, who
concludes (presumably on the basis of the sort of ``research'' that is
done in ed schools) that the latest
generation of video games (i.e., from around the turn of the
century; ``Rise of Nations,'' ``Age of Mythology,'' "Morrowind,'' and
``Grand Theft Auto'' are praised -- what about AoW?) are in some ways more educational than
time spent in the classroom. (Perhaps this result is slightly
dependent on what clown is standing at the front of the room.) He's
written a book called What Video Games Have to Teach Us About
Learning and Literacy.

In a July 9, 2003, CNN/Money article by Chris Morris, Gee is quoted
explaining that there ``was a push to put thinking principles in
schools in the 1980's,'' but that ``... in the 90s, though, we made a
real return to 'skill and drill' and we lost this way of having people
think in complex ways. ... Games recruit a deeper way of thinking.''
(One of these days when I'm feeling appropriately low, I will add an
entry on ``critical thinking skills.'' For now let me just say,
``the blind leading the deaf.'')

In German, gern means `glad' and `gladly,' and reich
means `rich' (or `richly') and also functions as a suffix meaning
`-rich' or `-ful' (the cognate -voll has similar meaning). I
haven't checked yet to see what meaning this surname was understood to
have, but one could interpret gernreich as `joyful' or as `happy
to be rich.'

Rudi Gernreich (1922-1985) was a famous, controversialist designer of
clothes, and ``joyful'' seems like a fair description. Playful might
be better. I don't know how rich you can get making clothes only a
model would dare to wear. In 1964, he came out with the
monokini, a one-piece topless bathing
suit intended to be worn by men or women who had shaved off all head
and body hair. From the posed pictures of that time, it seems clear
that it was easier in those days to find models, female as well as
male, willing to pose topless than any models willing to shave off all
their hair. The monokini was the centerpiece of Gernreich's famous
UNISEX Project. (Well, the idea of ``unisex'' clothing was famous, his
UNISEX Project less so.)

She first appeared on television
in 1953. From what I recall of TV image quality even in the 1960's,
she probably appeared ghostly at the time, but so then did everyone
else. (Her first ``notable TV guest appearance,'' according to IMDb, was on
` ``Studio One'', a
dramatic ``anthology series'' that ran 1948-59. She appeared on May
18, 1953, in an episode entitled ``The Laugh Maker.'' This was one of
four episodes starring Jackie Gleason, and as of mid-2004, all of the
comment on this series at IMDb is about these).

Alice Ghostley is best remembered for her role on the long-running TV
show ``Bewitched''
(1964-9, the Dick York era, and 1969-72, the Dick Sargent years).
There she played ``Esmerelda'' from 1969 to 1972. She had an earlier
guest appearance there, 1966, as the klutzy maid Naomi in
episode 53: ``Maid to Order.'' The Esmerelda character, which
appeared in fifteen episodes, was a bumbling witch.

(I've also seen the character name with the more usual ``Esmeralda''
spelling, but I couldn't account for the widespread use of the triple-e
spelling if that had not in fact been used in the credits.)

Dana GIOIA

Dana Gioia is reportedly a poet and, as of November 2007, chairman
of the US National Endowment for the Arts. In Italian, gioia
means `joy.' For anyone in the US who appreciates poetry, these are
anything by joyful times. Most people who think they write poetry have
the notion that poetry is maudlin bad prose set with a ragged right
margin. Rhyming, to say nothing of rhyme schemes, cramps their
``style.'' But they don't have an aggressive objection to meter --
they are simply nescient.

Three well-known US authors died in 2007 -- Kurt Vonnegut, William
Styron, and Norman Mailer. The AP sent out a chin-scratcher on this
for November 15, 2007. The item included the intriguing observation
that ``Vonnegut was the American Mark Twain.'' This was attributed to
Mailer's literary executioner -- sorry, that's executor. For
the first time ever, I actually felt a little sympathy for Mailer.

Gioia was quoted in the article on the subject of Vonnegut's greater
popularity: ``First of all, Vonnegut's funny, and humor has a broad
appeal.''

JUST GJESSING

A Norwegian professor of statistics, probably. Well, maybe just
possibly. I did find an intriguingly titled article (``Unusual
Solvent'') by a J. Gjessing (who works in Sweden) and
P. J. Tomlin in the British Journal of Anaesthesia
[vol. 49, no. 9, p. 954 (1977)].

More recently, one Just Gjessing wrote a review of ``Resource
Communities, Settlement and Workforce Issues'' for the Dutch
publication Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie
[vol. 81, no. 5, p. 393 (1990)]. As of this writing (July 2001),
JG is a professor emeritus at the Geography Institute at the
University of Oslo.

I originally read about the statistics professor Just Gjessing in a
statistics book and figured it was probably a joke. From this entry
in a Science Jokes page, it seems at least to be a very popular
joke.

Dr. DORE GOLD

As of May 2016, he's the Director-General of Israel's Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. (He's not the actual foreign minister; that hat is
worn by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.) He has held a variety of
positions in many Israeli governments, most of them diplomatic or
advisory. This item is here in case he ever gets the Finance Ministry
portfolio.

Yeah, in 2009 he debated South African Justice Richard Goldstone. (The
subject was the U.N. Gaza Report, of which Goldstone was lead author;
the venue was Brandeis University.) That doesn't meet our exacting
standards for irony.

Michael GOLD

Author of a 1930 memoir of growing up on New York's East Side. It
went through eleven printings in that year alone: Jews Without
Money (New York: International Publishers). Nazi Brown Shirts
broke into the home of a German friend of his when she was translating
a chapter of the book, and they had a laugh about it before arresting
her (for her politics). Gold's book itself is a bit less... edifying,
as we say, than Harry Golden's memoirs (mentioned at the
yard sale entry).

Paul M. GOLDbart and Nigel GOLDENfeld

Editors, with David Sherrington, of Stealing the Gold: A
celebration of the pioneering physics of Sam Edwards (Clarendon,
2004). If the front matter of the volume explained the title of the
book, I missed it.

Executive Director of the NHLPA during
the NHL lockout that began in 2004. For
years the NHLPA, Bob Goodenow at its head, insisted that a collective
bargaining agreement that contained a salary cap was absolutely
unacceptable. In February 2005, in a desperate last effort (and not
quite the first effort) to salvage a severely truncated season, the
union proposed a $49 million soft cap (teams to be taxed for exceeding
it). The owners immediately made a counteroffer of $42.5 million.
Negotiators for the two sides met two days later and were somehow able
to avoid bridging the difference. It seems there was no deal that was
good enough for both sides. (Enow is an older variant of the
word enough. It's just a little short.)

NHL Commissioner Gary BETTMAN will eventually get his own subentry.
Business is a kind of gambling, but in the short term the lockout was
a sure thing: the league knew what it wouldn't spend and what revenues
wouldn't come in, and on balance the loss was smaller than it stood to
be if there was a season. (Yeah, yeah: there was the unrealized loss
of franchise value, but that represents an estimate of long-term
profitability, which was going down the toilet anyway.) Until Bettman
gets his, just let me note that everybody who ever cared became
disgusted with both sides in the dispute. I don't want to disappoint
my fans, so I'll eventually find a way to line up with the general view
that both sides deserve blame. It won't be hard.

On August 1, 2008, the New York Times ran a story on its
front page entitled ``In Strangers, Centenarian Finds Literary
Lifeline.'' It was about Liz Goodyear, 101 at the time. Either the
NYT was kicking off a celebration of Slow News Month, or it was taking
a (front) page from its superior rival, the Wall Street Journal,
which has historically put non-newsy or off-beat stories on the front
page. (This particular idiosyncracy seems to have subsided slightly
in the Murdoch regime.) Sure, we're talkin' below the fold, but
still...

It seems that all her years have been good, in retrospect:
``I think I only remember the amusing things; I don't remember any
depressing things,'' Ms. Goodyear said in an interview. ``I think I
just put them out of my mind. I know everybody has things that they
want to forget, but I dont even have to forget. I just dont
remember.''

Vermonter Billi Gosh attended (was going to attend, anyway,
according to the AP item mentioned below) the 2008 national convention
of the Democratic party as a ``superdelegate.'' That's someone who
attends ex officio. She (or whatever -- the article didn't
indicate) had declared herself (or whateverself, mutatis
mutandis) as a supporter of Hillary Clinton's bid for the
presidential nomination. Gosh was quoted in an AP article on
superdelegates that went out February 22, 2008:

``As superdelegates, we have the opportunity to change our mind, so
she's just connecting with me,'' Gosh said. ``I couldn't believe she
was able to fit in calls like that [in]to her incredibly busy
schedule.''

Gosh, that's super!

Shigeki GOTO

A professor
in the Department of Information and Computer Science at Japan's Waseda
University. He has written a number of textbooks on LISP and PROLOG.
These languages lacked goto at a time when most languages had goto.

He was a professional baseball player from late in the 1916 season
until 1934. His nickname -- it seems that all ballplayers had
nicknames then -- was ``Ol' Stubblebeard.'' Maybe he acquired this
nickname in his later years; early pictures show him cleanshaven.
Anyway, the beard isn't what got him into this section of the glossary.

Grimes was a pitcher who threw the spitball. In 1920,
major league baseball banned the
spitball, but grandfathered-in seventeen established spitball pitchers.
Grimes was only 26 at the time, and he was the last of those to retire,
making him the last pitcher in the bigs officially allowed to throw
that filthy pitch. (I wish I could add that he was burly too, but according
to this online Baseball Almanac stat sheet, he was 5'10" and
weighed 175 lb.)

The connection here is not just with ``head'' but with ``liquid-foods
packaging'': the German noun Kopf, meaning `head,' and the
English word cup, meaning `cup,' are both early borrowings of
the Latincuppa, meaning `cup.' It
is supposed that in German, the word came to be used metaphorically,
the skull or head being a sort of receptacle for the brain. (For more
on the food angle, see the BRAINIAC
entry.) A likely story, sure. Maybe the medieval Germans did what the
Scythians were reputed to have done, and made cups out of skulls no
longer serving (one hopes) their original owners.

There's a further fluid-container connection, which you'll probably
regret my mentioning, but it's all in service of a pun.
The most common kind of pathologically large head (back before this was
reliably diagnosed and treated) was hydrocephaly (physicians now prefer
the term hydrocephalus), called ``water on the brain.'' This is an
intracranial accumulation of CSF, usually
caused by spina bifida or some other ventricular block. Hydrocephalus
in infants can cause rapid skull expansion and a small face. In
adults, with the skull not able to expand, neurological dysfunction may
be a greater danger, but the really extreme intellectual deficits occur
with a pathology known as a ``swelled head.''

A man whose surname can be parsed to mean about the same thing as
Grosskopf was
Robert
Grosseteste. He was a scholar at Oxford in the first half of the
thirteenth century, remembered today (especially thanks to the encomia
of Roger Bacon) for his early advocacy of the experimental method in
science. He was also a philologist -- a careful one by the standards
of his time -- and he wrote on a wide variety of scientific,
philosophical, and ecclesiastic topics. He was a renaissance man
somewhat avant la lettre. I suppose you might say he had a capacious
mind.

A judge of the Ontario Superior Court. On Thursday, November 8,
2001, he granted temporary protection from creditors to the airline
Canada 3000. The next morning before dawn, the airline grounded its
fleet. (We have a list of other interesting
judge names.)

In court the airline was represented by Bill Burden, who explained that
the airline was suffering under the weight of ``a downturn in the
economy and we've got the events of Sept. 11 and most recently the
[decline] of the Canadian dollar, [which] affects this organization's
ability to pay some of its American lessors.'' Canada 3000 had
indicated that same Thursday that it would continue flying.

In 2000, he led a rebellion that forced
Ecuadoran President Jamil Mahuad out of
office. Two years later, Gutiérrez was elected president on a
populist, anti-corruption platform. Starting in December 2004, when
Congress restructured the nation's Corte Suprema de Justicia,
replacing 27 of its 31 justices, there were growing, and increasingly
violent, street protests demanding the resignation of essentially the
entire government (all three branches). In early April 2005, former
(ousted and exiled) president Abdala Bucaram reentered the country,
leading to intensified protests. The situation came to a head on April
19 and 20, in a rapid cascade of events whose precise sequence I
haven't sorted out yet. Opposition members of Congress became
convinced that President Gutiérrez had to be ousted immediately,
and they met at the downtown offices of
CIESPAL to do it.

Constitutionally, the legislators ought to have followed an impeachment
procedure. Given the exigencies of the moment, however, they followed
the creative suggestion of Congressman Ramiro Rivera, who moved that
since Gutiérrez had not complied faithfully with the
responsibilities of the presidency, he was effectively absent. Thus,
acting under the clause of the constitution allowing Congress to
replace a president who abandons his responsibilities, they declared
the office vacant. Debate took less than an hour, and the vote was
62-0. (The full Congress, the country's unicameral legislature, has
100 members.) Congress replaced Gutiérrez with the
vice-president (who had come to be a political opponent of the
president after their ticket was elected). In 1997, when this sequence
of brief governments began, President Bucaram had been ousted for
``mental incapacity.'' The details in this paragraph don't really have
much to do with the anyone's name, but I find them amusing and you
should too.

Meanwhile, ex-president Gutiérrez ordered ex-president Bucaram
out of the country. Adm. Victor Hugo Rosero (did the country run out
of Spanish names?), head of the joint chiefs of staff, announced that
the armed forces were withdrawing their support for the ex-president.
That evening, Gutiérrez abandoned the presidential palace by
helicopter, and there were conflicting reports of where he was seeking
political asylum. Acting Attorney General Cecilia Armas issued an
arrest warrant for Gutiérrez for his alleged role in violently
suppressing the recent violent protests across the country.
(Cecilia is the female form of Cecil, a
Latin name meaning `blind.' Armas is
just Spanish for `weapons.' The Attorney General heads the ministry of
justice. Justice is traditionally represented as a woman wearing a
blinder and carrying a sword. She also carries a pair of scales, which
I suppose could serve as a blunt instrument.)

The only reason I put this subentry in is that Lucio is an
Italian given name pronounced in that language as lucho is
pronounced in Spanish. The Spanish word lucho means `I fight'
or `I do battle,' and many news reports described President
Gutiérrez as ``embattled.''

The successor of Gutiérrez, his former vice-president Alfredo
Palacio, didn't make to the palace that day. He and a large number of
congressmen were stuck in the CIESPAL building where the Congressmen
had held their vote earlier. (It's a lovely building, by the way, and
there's some irony in the name.) The building was surrounded by
protesters, who chanted ``Acabamos con el presidente, ahora vamos
por el Congreso!'' (`We're done with the president, now we're
going for the Congress!') Amid chants demanding the dissolution of
Congress, congressmen who tried to leave the building were attacked and
pelted with heavy objects.

All these events took place in the nation's capital, Quito. One
doesn't usually think of it in this context, but the word quito
in Spanish means `I take away.' (I suppose that to an ignorant
Anglophone, it looks like it means `I quit.')
In a country on the Equator that is named for it, perhaps these names
should be taken seriously.

Douglas C. Hall is a member of the Devices and Materials Group (DMG).
In the analysis of electronic devices and materials, it is general
practice to distinguish two fundamental kinds of simple signal:
sinusoidally varying in time (alternating current --
``A. C.'') and constant in time (direct
current -- ``D. C.'').

A useful probe of conductivity properties is the Hall Effect, named
after its discoverer Edwin C. Hall. The Hall effect is
frequency-dependent, although the low-frequency Hall effect is
substantially constant and most directly useful for determining carrier
density in ordinary conductors. Hence, one often distinguishes
DC Hall effect and AC Hall effect.

Well, he was certainly learned. Although he is best remembered
outside the legal profession for his strong support of free speech, he
earned a spot on our list because he applied his learning to the
economic analysis of torts. He was the Richard Posner of his day, but
a better writer and more influential. Here is some of his opinion in
United States v. Carroll Towing, 159 F.2d 169 (2d Cir. 1947). The case
involved a claim for damages incident upon a boat-owner's failure
successfully to secure his vessel at harbor.

[T]he owner's duty, as in other similar situations, to provide against
resulting injuries is a function of three variables: (1) The
probability that she will break away; (2) the gravity of the resulting
injury, if she does; (3) the burden of adequate precautions. Possibly
it serves to bring this notion into relief to state it in algebraic
terms: if the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden,
B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P:
i.e., whether B < PL.

The judge was usually referred to as ``Learned Hand.'' (We have more on
unusual judge names.) Learned Hand
had a less-well-known cousin, also a judge, named Augustus Noble. Over
the course of many years they served together on two different courts.
They probably enjoyed a situation requiring them to be called by more
than just their surnames.

The surname is evidently intended to suggest the phrase ``hasse
den Teufel'' (`hate the devil'), just as the more common surname
Hassenpflug is understood as ``hasse den Pflug'' (`hate
the plow,' nickname for a lazy farmer). Oscar Hassenteufel is a
Bolivian jurist. (We list other unusual
judge names.)

He was appointed to Bolivia's highest court (la Corte Suprema de
Justicia) at the beginning of 1993 or thereabouts, and became
president of the court (something like chief justice) in mid-1999. At
the beginning of January 2001, he resigned for health reasons. He
explicitly denied that his resignation was due to political pressure or
any other reason; over the last two months of 2000, he had been the
target of criticism from his colleagues, for his lenience with the
Consejo de la Judicatura, an administrative and disciplinary
body subordinate to the Judiciary.

Since at least July of 2001 (last checked July 2005), he has been a
member of CNE.

Michael HASTINGS

Well, if the verb were haste instead of hasten, then
the surname would mean ``hastenings.'' In an article posted to
the web at 12:28 PM EDT, June 28, 2012, Michael Hastings reported
that ``CNN News Staffers Revolt Over Blown Coverage'' (yeh, that's the
article title), a couple of hours earlier. It wasn't about anything
that happened on a basketball court (the NBA finals ended days before)
but in the US Supreme Court. The CNN
``team'' judged incorrectly, as they heard the beginning of the
majority decision, that (as widely expected) the individual mandate (a
requirement that everyone buy health insurance) in the 2010 Health Care
law was ruled unconstitutional. They relayed the guess to an on-air
face, who announced it at 10:07 AM, and CNN rushed into online and
cable print. The definite retraction came at about 10:14. The
Hastings article contained quotes from half a dozen newspeople.

[Both CNN and Fox News drew the same erroneous conclusion when Justice
John Roberts, reading the majority decision he had written, declared
that the mandate was unconstitutional as an act regulating interstate
commerce (i.e., Congress did not have the power to impose the
mandate under the powers granted it by the Commerce Clause of the US
constitution). However, the majority decided that the penalty for not
obeying the mandate should be regarded as a tax, and that this was
constitutional under the powers of Congress to impose a tax. (Probably
8 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices -- many suspect 9 of 9 -- understood
how stupid this reasoning is, since it gives the government the power
to compel anything, so long as the penalty for not doing it can be
regarded as a tax.) I don't know why CNN got more criticism than Fox
for jumping the gun.]

When he was a boy, it was not uncommon to dress young boys in
girls' outfits (with girls' hairstyles in the bargain). However,
Ernest's mother Grace liked to pass off Ernest and his sister
Marcelline as identical twins. This occasionally meant that Marcelline
wore boy's overalls, but usually it was Ernest's gender that suffered a
bender. As an adult, his nickname among friends was
``Hem.'' Why do I also write Ernest
in all-caps? Well, we all know ``The Importance of Being Ernest.''

Marcelline, Grace Hall Hemingway's first child, was born January 15,
1898. She was held back from entering grade school so that she and
Ernest (born July 21, 1899) could be together in the same grade. In
1917, Ernest was rejected for service in the US Army on account of a
vision problem. In order to get in on the action (WWI),
in early 1918 he lied about his age to join the Red Cross and drive
ambulances for the Italian army. He gave his birth year as 1898, and
ever since then many biographies have been getting it wrong. It's odd
-- you wouldn't imagine that the Red Cross records or eligibility rules
would be many biographies' source for his vital statistics.

Grace Hemingway seems to have made a project of getting her children
confused, or making them confusing or something. The fourth of six
children was named Madelaine and used the nickname ``Sunny.''

A
neurologist. The Head-Holmes
syndrome, named after him and Gordon Morgan Holmes, would have been a
more interesting name if his collaborator had been named Gorgon Mordan
Holmes. Alas. It's also known as ``Head's syndrome.'' Uh, oh yeah --
about the syndrome itself: sensory changes produced by brain lesions,
and correlated with the locations of the lesions.

Richard HELL

One of the founders of the punk rock movement. Credited with
creating the anti-disco style of clothing and the "Please Kill Me"
tee-shirt concept. Oh yeah, he also wrote some songs -- like that
matters or anything. Anyway, he doesn't really belong here, because
his real name is Richard Meyers -- Hell is just a stage name, and there
is no ex post facto destiny (at least not yet). The real reason
for this paragraph is to point you to the
CBGB entry.

``Now in our third generation of family ownership, we feature one
of the largest selections of hats and caps in the Pacific Northwest.''

ART HERTZ

A past president of the Orange Bowl game. Interviewed November 9,
2002, when Notre Dame was about tenth-ranked
in the polls with a 9-1 record, he explained why the bowl would like to
invite Notre Dame to play even if it ended the season 10-2.

``We have to put asses in seats. Notre Dame will fill us up. The way
the system is now, if we don't sell our tickets [a mere $100 a pop],
we're in the hole.''

Those few of you who wonder why ``Art Hertz'' is listed here probably
think that football is all about brains -- mental alertness and a
healthy lifestyle and such. In fact, there's an art to it.

SUE K. HICKs

He was named after his mother. That's right, a boy named
Sue. Obviously, he had to become a country lawyer, and he
did. But he is not remembered for a civil suit. Sue K. Hicks was the
attorney who organized the prosecution team for the Scopes trial (see
TSTA).

The song ``A Boy Named Sue'' was written by Shel Silverstein and
popularized by the late great Johnny
Cash. It is often claimed that Sue K. Hicks was the inspiration
for the song, but I haven't read anything definite.
Silverstein died in 1999, so it's conceivable we may never know.
We have more on unusual judge names.

This is probably the right place to mention Eugène Sue. He was
a French limousine liberal -- a socialist with family money. Well, he
wasn't a red-diaper baby. Apparently his views evolved. He eventually
wrote a lot of soppy serial novels. He used the pen name Marie-joseph
Sue -- now how smart is that?

HIPPOLYTUS

A son of Hippolyta (an Amazon queen) and Theseus (the guy who slew
the Minotaur). The Greek -lytus comes
from luein, `to loosen.' (The alliteration in the translation
is a consequence of the fact that the Greek and English words are
cognates back in Indo-European [IE].) This
guy needed to loosen up. In the prologue to the eponymous play
Euripedes wrote about him, Aphrodite scolds.
Now, is this stupid or what? But wait -- it gets worse!

The hippo part of the name means
`horse,' of course, and no one can talk to
a... Oh, sorry, got carried away there. The combined name thus
suggests someone who breaks horses. Instead of fulfilling that
destiny, he was pulled apart by horses, on orders of Poseidon.

(I think that pulling apart by horses captured the medieval
imagination. I've seen the trope in one or two medieval stories, but
the usual means of execution was hanging.)

British Agriculture Minister during the beginning of the Mad Cow Disease crisis (videBSE).

A hogg, in case you don't know, is a sheep. The BSE outbreak probably
began because brains (along with other unsalable bits) of sheep
infected with scrapie were ground up and added to cattle feed.

In 1802, James Hogg (probably no relation) and Walter Scott met.
They shared a passion for the culturally rich Borders that was their
home, for poetry, and specifically for the rich poetry of the Scots
language. Hogg (1770-1835) and Scott (1771-1832) began a friendship
that lasted the rest of Scott's life. Scott was middle-class and
correct, while Hogg was usually poor and unapologetically earthy, and
they lived in a time and a place where class counted for much.
(Hogg's day job was shepherding.) Hogg even wrote, in his
Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott, that his acceptance
by Scott's very status-jealous wife was somewhat exceptional. Some
of Scott's other, ``classy'' friends did not stop at mere disdain,
but deliberately misquoted and misrepresented Hogg's literary output
in their reviews. It's well known that fear of legal and other
reprisal is the reason that so much writing of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century was published over pseudonyms. People tend
to forget that much of that feared retribution would have been
completely justified. [For another example, see this bit from Matthew Arnold.]

The Scott scholar Ian Duncan suggests [ftnt. 35] that the character of the
homonymous Gurth in Scott's Ivanhoe is modeled on Hogg.
Gurth becomes the loyal feudal follower of the knight Ivanhoe,
evidently reflecting Scott's feudalistic ideal of his own
relationship with Hogg. The character Gurth is a swineherd.

Hohl is a German adjective meaning `hollow,' obviously
cognate with English `hollow' and `hole.' The usual German word for a
general sort of hole is Loch, though various other words are
used, such as Höhlung. The word Höhle means
`cave.' The surnames Hohl, Höhl, and Höhle
were originally given to people who came from places whose topologies
could be described vaguely as such: hollows, depressions, narrows, etc.
Ms. Hohl is (as of May 2007) an assistant education director at Colossal
Cave Mountain Park, and guides tours of the cave.

The German word hoh is a variant of hoch, meaning (and
cognate with) `high.' Historically, the spelling was especially common
in the area between Bamberg and Würzburg. Someone named Hohmann
would likely be descended from someone in that area who was tall or
lived in a high place. Walter Hohmann, a professional architect,
re-earned the name by becoming space-travel royalty, a member of the
International Space Hall of Fame (in New Mexico) inducted in 1976. His
highness was concerned with interplanetary travel. In 1925 he
published a small book entitled Die Erreichbarkeit der
Himmelskörper; it was translated
as `The Attainability of the Heavenly Bodies' (Washington, D.C.:
NASA Technical Translation F-44, 1960).

One particular problem considered in the book was that of the powered
space flight maneuvers needed to transfer a satellite from an initial
circular orbit to a higher-altitude final circular orbit in the same
orbital plane. His low-energy solution to that problem is known as the
Hohmann transfer maneuver. (Hohmann believed that his proposal was a
minimal-energy transfer, but in some cases bi-elliptic transfer is
more efficient.)

He's the Director of Public Programs at the New York Public
Library, as of 2010.

D. HOLZ

A German researcher in wood materials. In German, Holz
means `wood.' I already pointed that out at the Holz entry, and I even gave you a little
reminder nudge at the Lou (Holtz) entry, but
I have to repeat it because you evidently haven't been paying
attention. I swear, I don't know why I even bother!

I noticed D. Holz because of an article he published in the journal
Holzforschung (Forschung means `research'): ``Tropical
hardwoods used in musical instruments -- Can we substitute them by
temperate zone species?'' (vol. 50, #2, pp. 121-9).
The answer is: only to a limited extent. Tropical woods are strong.

I have been asked what connection there might be between this person's
surname and his profession. One is that the word pornography is
ultimately derived from the Greek porne, `prostitute,' and
graphein. Less literally, hookers and pornographers both work
at the nexus of sex and money.

You know, this is really starting to bother me. It probably had
something to do with the earlier Hoyle's unquestioned authority, which
led to the expression ``according to Hoyle'' meaning perfectly in
accord with the accepted rules.

Isaac HULL

Captain Hull was the first commander during war of the
USS Constitution,
a frigate of the U.S. Navy that was built in Boston, 1797-98. The
Constitution seems to have a good one. She had a running fight
for three days and nights, July 17-20, 1812, with five British vessels,
but escaped. One of those five, the Guerrière, she
captured on August 19, and she captured the frigate Java on
December 29. On Valentine's Day 1814, she captured the Picton.
For her various exploits, the Constitution earned the nickname ``Old
Ironsides.'' (She was a wooden ship, of course, and still is.)

Walter HUNT

Designed the first repeating rifle in 1849. The same year, he
invented the safety pin.

FREEDOM A. HUNTER

It seems he was hunting around for a way to lose it. Freedom
Hunter, age 18, somehow came into possession of the driver's license of
Tim Holt, and of the checkbook of a couple whose name was not reported.
(All persons and events mentioned were in Lincoln, Nebraska.) Hunter
wrote out a check for $275 from the couple to Tim Holt, and went to a
drive-up bank window to cash it using Tim Holt's license as ID. The
only problem: Tim Holt, who had reported the loss of his driver's
license, was Hunter's teller at the bank. Holt called police as Hunter
waited for the cash. Hunter was eventually found guilty in Lancaster
County District Court of attempted second-degree forgery, and sentenced
to six months in jail.

The crime took place on June 28, 1990, and Hunter was sentenced the
following January 31. Hunter was represented by the public defender,
so possibly the sentence amounted to time served awaiting trial. I
don't know; the only report I could find of this interesting case was
an AP wire story the day after
sentencing. The case is mentioned (with fewer details) in Roland
Sweet's Law and Disorder: Weird News of Crime and Punishment
(Signet, January 1994), p. 35.

DR. IN HUR

Dr. Hur (full name: In Haing Hur) is an obstetrician and
gynecologist who practices in Anaheim and Garden Grove, California.
His name and profession have been featured on The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno.

Charles HURT

As of this writing (May 7, 2008), Hurt is D.C. Bureau Chief for the
New York Post. Following Hillary Clinton's disappointing
returns following presidential nomination primaries yesterday (in North
Carolina and Indiana), an
analysis column was published under Hurt's byline, entitled ``Stick
a Fork in Her -- She's Done.'' Yes, it's hackneyed, but anyone named
Hurt gets extra credit for using it.

Although I didn't block-capitalize Charles above, I'd like to
add that a charle is a kind of hard hooked burr, kind of like a
heavy gumball seedpod. Unfortunately, I don't know this to be
particularly true in any known language. On the bright side, there are
plenty of languages I don't know about.

Ibrahim SAVED Soliman Ibrahim

His curiosity killed this cat, but saved many more. Ibrahim was a
crewman aboard the Egyptian merchant vessel
Wabi Alaras, and he was doing a little courtesy or business freight on
the side. His ship was in Brazil, next stop
Canada. In Brazil an unidentified person gave
him a suitcase to take to Canada. Ibrahim opened it in his hotel room,
became acutely and severely ill, and died on April 11, 2003. Reuters
reported that several health workers who discovered the body were
evaluated at a hospital after becoming sick, but as of April 27 they
were out of danger. Brazilian authorities are 90% certain the suitcase
carried anthrax. In the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, RCMP
Inspector Dan Tanner said ``there is absolutely no criminal or
terrorist threat to Canada.'' I guess he figures that next time the
terrorists will be more careful and transport it safely to its
target in the US.

Richard H. IMMERMAN

Richard Immerman is professor in the Department of History at
Temple University. The plain sense of immerman[n] in German is
`forever man,' which seems pretty appropriate for a historian. (In
fact, the surname is really just a Herkunftsname, a
`place-of-origin name,' for someone from a region that was known as
Immer, and that place name apparently had no etymological connection
to the adverb immer.)

Richie INCOGNITO

A very offensive player for the NFL's St. Louis Rams. I never
heard of him before either, and I probably wouldn't recognize him out
on the street. When he was released by the Rams on December 15, 2009,
the most recent file photo available was from September 27. (Okay,
weak, I'll try to come up with something better.)

Gary INK

Research Librarian for Publisher's Weekly.

INSEIN Prison

A Myanmar military-run prison in the suburbs north of Rangoon.
More than a third of webpages containing the text ``Insein Prison''
contain the text ``notorious Insein Prison.'' Yes, it is pronounced
``insane.'' Myanmar, as you know, is Burma. Rangoon, as you probably
don't, is now supposed to be known as Yangon.

DURK JAGER

President and CEO of P & G. He makes it into the nomen est
omen list on account of P & G's acquisition, announced August
1999, of Iams Pet Nutrition Co. Iams is the second-ranked premium
pet-food maker in the US (see IAMS).
Durk Jager is Dutch, and in Dutch jager means `hunter.' It's a
cognate of the German word Jäger (`hunter'). If you wanted
to give the game a sporting chance, you might hunt with a dirk.

At the time of the corporate acquisition, Jager owned two cats and two
dogs, to the extent that one can be said to ``own'' a cat. He noted
that more households have pets than children [by chronological rather
than emotional-maturity definition, I assume]. According to
P & G, on average, pet owners spend over $150/yr. on
health and nutrition products for their pets, and only $60 on laundry
products.

Benjamin JEALOUS

Jealous was named president of the NAACP on May 17, 2008, assuming
office the following September. Aged 35 at the time of appointment, he
became the youngest person ever to be president of the then 99-year-old
organization. He is a fourth-generation NAACP member. He began
working on civil rights when he was 14 and helped organize voter
registration for Jesse Jackson's presidential bid. (It reminds me of
my cousin Victoria, who grew up in Los Angeles. She was handing out
Democratic Party campaign material at some mall when somebody called
her a ``communist.'' She had to ask her dad what that meant.)

Warren STEED Jeffs

Leader (``prophet'') of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, estimated to have at least 40 wives
and 60 children. When he was arrested in late August 2006, he was
wanted on various charges, including two counts of rape as an
accomplice, for his role in arranging an underage marriage. The
following (from Shakespeare's ``Venus and Adonis'') is not meant to
disparage the seriousness of those charges, but only to serve as a
reminder of some connotations associated with the word steed:

The studded bridle on a ragged bough
Nimbly she fastens: -- O, how quick is love! --
The steed is stalled up, and even now
To tie the rider she begins to prove:
Backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust,
And govern'd him in strength, though not in lust.

As of this writing (late July 2013) he's the New York Yankees' star
shortstop (DL) and team captain. In 1996, at the
end of his first year as a regular starter (he had played 13 games in
1995 in place of injured SS Tony
Fernández), he was the unanimous choice for the
AL Rookie of the Year, and in 18 seasons
(all as a Yankee), he's been an All-Star 13 times. Jeter is a
French verb meaning `throw,' of course.

HRISTO Jivkov

The Slavic countries that were proselytized mostly by Orthodox
(Eastern) Christianity now use the Cyrillic alphabet (an alphabet not
invented by St. Cyril or his brother Methodius). That alphabet is
based most directly on the Greek alphabet, and the title of Christ is
written with letters corresponding to chi and rho, as in the original
Greek. In fact, if you ignore an occasional vowel diacritic and accept
the lunate sigma, Christ is written as in Greek: Xpictoc (as close as I
can get without fooling with fonts). That's the spelling in Serbian,
Bulgarian and Russian, and probably most of the Cyrillic Slavic
languages I didn't check.

However, although chi in Ancient Greek had a ``hard'' (an aspirated) k
sound, in Slavic languages the derived letter represents an aitch, and
is typically transliterated by "k" or "kh" in
English. In Croatian, which is written with Roman characters,
Christ is Krist (Croatia was proselytized by the Western
church). In addition, the alternate Hristos is recognized in
Croatian; it's the standard Roman spelling of the Serbian word
(normally written in a slightly extended Cyrillic).

Note, BTW, that various Slavic languages
have another aitch sound. The letter derived from Greek gamma, which
was devoiced into the Roman c (originally with a uniformly ``hard
sound'' -- unaspirated k), was devoiced differently for Cyrillic
orthography. The Cyrillic letter we recognize as a gamma is pronounced
like our aitch in Russian and Ukrainian. So the name Igor is
pronounced ``EE-hore'' in the places where it is most common. (The
same gamma letter occurs in the usual Greek loan words where we use g,
and leads to a common feature of the Russian accent in Western
languages.)

Not in any known way a relative of the British poet and
lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson of England, this Sam Jr. was
author in 1798 of the first dictionary compiled in America, A
School Dictionary. [It wasn't a pen name either.]
(See also the just coincidence
entry.)

Sir Igor Judge first served as a high court judge of the
Queen's Bench Division in 1988. Since 2005 he
has held the office of President of the Queen's Bench Division.
Cf.Lord Justice Laws. (We list
other striking judge names.)

R.KANE

A philosophy professor at UT Austin. He is the author of Free
Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze (1994), and The Significance of Free
Will (1996) and editor of various Oxford University Press volumes
on the philosophy of Free Will.

Neel KASHKARI

An assistant secretary in the US Department of the Treasury who in
October 2008, at the age of 35, was selected to head the Office of
Financial Stability. That is, he was placed in charge of a $700
billion rescue of financial institutions. It's sort of a
cash-and-carry deal.

The surname, which is now most commonly spelled Kellogg and Kellog,
is attested in older records as Kelhoge, Kelehoog, and Kyllehog (in
order of increasing antiquity). If the compound had evolved as its
elements did in the language, it would be killhog. The name means
butcher. My source for this is A Dictionary of English
Surnames, by P. H. Reaney and
R. M. Wilson (Routledge, 1991), but the etymology does not appear
to be controversial. The same source mentions Killebole and Kilfole as
parallel but does not translate them. Presumably they mean kill-bull
and kill-fowl. The OED2 has none of these,
but does give various definitions for kill-cow as a person who cows
others, a butcher, and related others. OED
doesn't normally define proper nouns (unless they are used
attributively, say), but that shouldn't be such a factor.

John H. Kellogg is probably the best known Kellogg who ever lived,
especially as the Kellogg-Briand Pact fades into history (leaving
behind nothing but Nobel Peace prizes for Frank B. Kellogg and Aristide
Briand). John Harvey Kellogg was a vegetarian, and a physician in
charge of a Seventh-Day Adventist sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan.
(It's now called the Battle Creek Health Center, and no longer
associated with the SDA. Also, Kellogg
was excommunicated.) There he developed nut and vegetable products for
the patients. He did not invent cornflakes; his cornflake innovation
was to serve them for breakfast. John Harvey's younger brother W.K.
(Will Keith, who also lived over 91 years: April 7, 1860-Oct. 6, 1951)
co-founded a company with his brother, to manufacture toasted
cornflakes for former patients and even a few other interested parties.

John Harvey had the majority share, but he distributed shares to other
physicians at the Sanatorium. Bad move. While brother John (are you
sleeping?) was visiting Pavlov in Russia, brother W.K. bought up enough
shares from John's fellow physicians to take a controlling interest.
(I imagine this sort of thing happened during the dot-com boom too,
when many start-ups paid their employees in shares.) Once W.K. got
control, he changed the company name to W.K. Kellogg Company. The box
lost the silly sanatorium picture and got W.K.'s signature in exchange.
They started adding sugar and making
money, and later offered some other dry breakfast cereals.

A former patient, C.W. Post, afterwards went into the same business.
(Yeah, there's some name stuff happening there, but we have high
standards, so he won't get his own entry.) I seem to recall there were
some alleged-violation-of-nondisclosure sorts of issues between Kellogg
and Post. Can't we all just be friends?

Sevan KEVORKIAN

The famous Kevorkian is Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan euthanasia
advocate and activist also known by the nickname ``Dr. Death.'' (Yes,
he advocates euthanasia in other places than Michigan as well. I just
wrote that sentence that way to save space and time, see?) A retired
pathologist, Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder in
1999 for assisting in (by his own count, more than 130) suicides. He
was released on parole after eight years. He has said that the terms
of his parole limit his ability to discuss medically-assisted suicide,
but they apparently don't prevent him from saying that he did nothing
wrong and that assisted-suicide should be decriminalized. I guess he's
not allowed to give how-to information. [He has other stuff he can
talk about. He thinks Nazi Germany comes out well in a comparison with
contemporary America. He favors elimination of all restrictions on
posession and carrying of fully automatic weapons (okay, maybe this
isn't so ``other'') and he urges people not to vote because the voting
system is imperfect (this wording is perhaps a bit milder than his).
He has an interestingly expansive take on the Ninth Amendment, too.] A
lot of people who favor euthanasia would probably like to see him put
away (again) for enthusiasm.

Sevan Kevorkian, late of San Diego, Ca., was someone else. Not a known
relation of the doctor, he nevertheless was also unusual, and he could
probably have used some how-to information from that doctor. Oddly,
however, things eventually sort of worked out. You could move the
``oddly'' around in that sentence and see how that works out.
On Saturday, January 26, 2008, his girlfriend found him (Sevan, in case
that was unclear) hanging unconscious from what I would call a hanger
rod in a closet of his apartment. She cut him down and revived him.
This was not a Snow White moment; Kevorkian was apparently unhappy
about his revival. He attacked his girlfriend and started pulling her
around the room by her hair. The scene attracted the attention of a
neighborhood couple that was parking at a nearby curb. The man climbed
into the apartment through a window to stop the assault and put
Kevorkian in a carotid restraint (a/k/a ``sleeper hold''). A picture
accompanying one news report showed that Kevorkian, age 36, had a
thick, football-linemanish neck. Nevertheless, he lost consciousness
again and was taken to a hospital, where he died five days later
(11:58pm, Jan. 31). The good Samaritan who intervened in the
altercation will be charged with second-degree murder for assisting in
Kevorkian's Rube-Goldberg suicide (no, no, just a joke, of course... I
hope).

Turi KING

A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester announced
on Sept. 12, 2012, that they had dug up what they think might be the
lost remains of King Richard III. He was the last English king to die
in battle (Battle of Bosworth Field, 1485). It is hoped that some DNA
can be recovered from the skeleton, and for comparison a DNA swab has
been obtained from a direct descendant of Richard III's elder sister --
a 17th great grand nephew. Presumably they'll look for an mtDNA match.
Turi King is leading the DNA analysis.

An entomologist at the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The insects as a class constitute the Class Insecta within the
standard taxonomy (for more on these hierarchical schemes, see King Phillip came over from German
shore, which isn't far from Denmark). Within this there are two
subclasses: wingless (Apterygota) and winged (Pterygota). (``Winged''
means that during some stage they have structures corresponding to
wings, or that they are apparently evolved from such animals; it
doesn't mean they can fly.)

Until 2002 there were only three orders within Subclass Apterygota:
Archaeognatha (commonly: the jumping bristletails), Monura (extinct),
and Thysanura (the common bristletails: silverfish and firebrats).
Silverfish are commonly found in the basement of my old house.

Since 1914, no new insect order had been added to the 33 known within
the entire Class Insecta, until Oliver Zompro, a graduate student at
the MPI Plön, tried to classify an Eocene-era wingless insect
encased in amber. He eventually found
two similar museum specimens and suspected they were part of a new
order. He sent them to Klass, who agreed. Order
Mantophasmatodea of Subclass Apterygota was announced in April
2002. Before the year was out, living members of the order had been
identified in Namibia, South Africa, and
Tanzania. (They didn't get around much, did they?)

Abel Klein is professor in the Mathematics Department at
UC Irvine. I don't know that his first name
isn't biblical, but it would be cool if he was named for two
mathematicians. His work is in mathematical physics, but if he worked
in a physics department it would be called condensed matter physics.
That's okay; the great mathematician Felix Klein was planning to be a
physicist until he got dragooned into completing the geometry text of
his recently deceased dissertation advisor. It would be even cooler if
Felix's Klein group had been named for
Abel Klein, since it's Abelian. Old joke, no doubt.

A Cambodian province. A 2009 Fox
News slideshow (still accessible as of 2012), based on Reuters
reporting, was entitled ``Crazy Cures From Around the World.'' The
ninth item, which I won't describe, has this caption: ``Cambodia
villagers collect the urine of a cow believed to have healing powers in
Kompot province, about 62 miles [editor's note: that's very roughly
99.78 kilometers; you're very welcome] south of the Cambodian capital
Phnom Penh. Belief in the supernatural healing powers of animals such
as cows, snakes and turtles is relatively common in Cambodia, where
more than third of the population lives on less than $1 a day and few
can afford modern medicines.''

In the West, by contrast, there are no crazy cures. Already in the
twentieth century, for example, tuberculosis was prevented with
synthetic cures. (I've temporarily misplaced a link to a Edward
Lovett's hand drawn map, showing 60 places around West London where you
could -- in 1914 -- buy necklaces of blue (and also some yellow) beads
to protect against TB.

Incidentally, if you're thinking that cow piss could never pass for
compote, you're thinking along the wrong lines. As the
Wikipedia Compote
entry used to warn: ``Not to be confused with
Kompot.'' Fwiw, the
dish (more like bowl) that my South American family calls
compota is even more liquid than the Polish Kompot.

Carmen KONTUR-Gronquist

A shapely resident of Arlington, Oregon. A fitness buff, she had a
picture taken that shows her attractive profile (this happens to be a
principal sense of Kontur in German) outlined against the open
driver's-side doorway of a firetruck, wearing only a black bra and
panties, and a navel stud, and perhaps some sensible black shoes and
socks, though that wasn't in the picture. Around the end of 2007,
hard-copies of some of her pictures, which had been taken three years
earlier, reportedly on some other town's firetruck (this was something
people wanted to know), started to circulate around town. At that
time, she posted the picture described above in her MySpace, um,
profile, and it made national news in early January 2008.

Also at the time, she was the mayor of Arlington. Arlington had a
population of about 500, so it's fair to say that the constituents she
upset were village people (just not The Village People). Anyway, there
was a recall election in late February, and she lost her job by a vote
of 142 to 139. An opinion widely bruited about the blogosphere is that
``they're'' fake (not the pictures). I guess the voters wanted a mayor
they could believe in. (But I say, if they don't come off with the
bra, that's real enough. Go to the entry for
pancreas -- located just below the bra --
for Jean Kerr's relevant thought on this matter.)

The mayor position is unpaid. She also worked as a bookkeeper for the
local fire department, managed the rural health clinic office in town,
and was a lifeguard at the town pool.

A guy who works in movie production. He's the only person I can
find whose role in a production was ever listed as first second
assistant director.

Michael LACKLAND

President and CEO of The Lackland Companies starting in May 1,
1994. He worked his way up some in the business, so I presume it's a
family business that he did not found. He is also a primary
shareholder of Lackland Self Storage, which operates self-storage
facilities.
Self-storage is used by people who lack the land, or at least the
space, to keep all their property.

Most of the Lackland facilites are in New Jersey, the most densely
populated state and the state which, as of 2010, had achieved the
highest per-capita property-tax collections in the US. (It's just
behind first-place Texas in average property-tax rates, but Texas has
lower average property values. Texas also has no state income tax.)

KYLE LAKE

A late pastor of University Baptist Church, near Baylor University.
Despite the learning-related context, Rev. Lake did something that
seems quite stupid. While standing inside a baptismal font, in water
up to his shoulder, he grabbed a microphone and electrocuted himself.
He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards at Hillcrest Baptist Medical
Center. Live and learn, as they say. Pastors at University Baptist
Church routinely used a microphone during baptisms. The woman Lake was
baptizing was not injured. This happened on October 30, 2005, before a
morning congregation of 800, in Waco,
Texas.

The name Kyle is derived from a Scottish topographic term meaning
narrow strait or channel.

Charles Lamb was born in London in 1775. His father was both clerk
and valet to a barrister called Samuel Salt.

Charles grew up to become a writer of poetry, plays, an influential
book of dramatic criticism, and various other now-forgotten works. His
least-forgotten work was a series of essays for the London
Magazine, published from 1820 to 1823 under the pen-name Elia.

Probably the best-remembered essay of Lamb, published in 1823, was the
evidently self-serving (or is that self-preserving?) A Dissertation
upon Roast Pig.

In Italian, the nounrocca (plural
rocche) originally meant `rock,' from the Latinrocca. In that acception, the
word has been replaced by roccia (from
Frenchroche). Rocca now
has a principal acception derived from an earlier transferred sense of
`fortress, stronghold.' That broad sense (along with the earlier sense
of `rock') is found in Dante, and Rocca is the first element in
many old place names. (All these Romance rocks are of female
gender, by the way.)

Current usage is a bit narrower: a rocca now describes a
fortress built on high land, or the highest local point, and protected
by steep walls or rock faces.
Rocche are
found in population centers founded a long time ago, and in Italy
that's a long time ago indeed.

As a technical term (that is, senso stretto), a rocca
refers to military architecture of the Renaissance -- fortified works
generally more squat and more massive than medieval castles.

(Florence's Belvedere was built at the end of the cinquecento --
completed 1595. It was originally named Forte di S. Maria; it
quickly got its popular and current name from its great view of the
city from a point high above the Arno. Its walls have slanted but
steep bastions. I don't know what they did wrong -- maybe the villa in
the middle looks too daintily out of place. Anyway, it's usually
called a forte, less often a fortezza. In 1951, the
Italian Army transferred it (back, I guess) to the city government, and
after restoration it opened to tourists in 1955. When I visited in
1987 or so, I looked down one of the walls and saw some guy tending a
little microfarm that abutted the fort. You know, maybe it's not
entirely a bad thing that Europe is headed for negative population
growth, crowded as it is.)

The word rocca has other, mostly attributive senses. A
homograph of the word is discussed at the Rock entry. Also worth mentioning
is the noun phrase rocca forte, commonly contracted
(roccaforte). This tends to be used more loosely, and may be
translated `stronghold.' It may refer to a fortress, or to a walled,
fortified, or naturally protected city, and the term is usually used
figuratively. The regular plural is roccheforti (or rocche
forti); interestingly, the variant roccaforti is common when
the term is used figuratively. Yes, we have a
Roquefort entry.

Bernard F.LAW

Head of the archdiocese of Boston from March
1984 until December 2002. Elevated to
cardinal (cardinality?) in 1985. For decades before then, priests in
his diocese who had been accused of child sexual abuse were repeatedly
suspended, sent for treatment, and then returned to minister and teach
the love of God in different parishes. Archbishop Law continued this
established practice.

In 1992 there was a spectacular scandal involving sexual abuse by Rev.
James R. Porter. That year a national meeting of US bishops
acknowledged that mistakes-were-made in handling abuse cases and
announced a new policy of openness in dealing with allegations. In
January 1993 Cardinal Law implemented what he described as a rigorous
new policy to remove dangerous priests from service.

The Roman Catholic Church does not have an
FOIA, so determining who knew what when is
a bit difficult. In the case of one priest, Paul J. Mahan, a Boston
Globe
investigation (reported Feb. 19, 2002) found evidence that some of
the psychological evaluations finding that Mahan was incorrigible and
likely to reabuse were known to Law many years before Mahan was finally
defrocked in 1997. With Mahan as with many others over the years, when
the Boston archdiocese would finally stop recycling a sexual predator
through different parishes, Law defrocked him but avoided getting the
organs of state law involved. However, this was perfectly legal: the
Massachusetts laws that require most other caregivers to report
incidents of sex abuse to police for possible prosecution specifically
exempt clergymen. Thank God --
otherwise Law might have gotten in trouble with the law!

The problems that eventually brought him down in 2002 began in the
first year of the rule of Law. They centered on John Geoghan, a priest
who was accused of molesting boys. Following the accusations, Law
moved him to a new parish in September 1984. In 1998, Geoghan was
defrocked. The Boston Archdiocese has been negotiating with upwards of
450 of his victims, and by December 2002 its accountants recommended
that the archdiocese file for bankruptcy, since it doesn't have the 100
million dollars needed to pay the negotiated settlements. More later.

She used to be a cop. There are probably a lot of cops named
Lawless, because Lawless is not an unusual name (e.g., see
Billy LAWLESS, supra). As Lana
explains,
``For 18 years, I was a cop for the city of Rialto, one of the most
violent cities in Southern California. I worked the gang unit. I had
a very tough and mean exterior. People didn't want to mess with me.''
However, she ``was compassionate inside. I always let the gay guys go;
they had enough drama in their lives.'' That was all back when she was
a burly man. Then she put some ``drama'' into her own life, by going
from burly to girly. She had her gender surgically ``reassigned,'' as
the expression goes.

She also had the associated hormone therapy, of course. ``I am a
woman,'' insisted Lawless, who adopted her new name from classic-movie
star Lana Turner but declines to discuss her previous name. ``I've
lost muscle mass. I don't have big guns [biceps]. They give you a
drug that stops you from producing testosterone. Your muscles atrophy.
In about seven months, I went from 245 pounds to 175 pounds. I've
gained back a little bit, but I feel like I don't have any power.''

The reason for her insistence is that on October 22, 2008, she won
the World Long Drive (women's) Championship at Mesquite, Nevada.
Lawless doesn't sound as powerless as she claims. Lawless is open
about her gender history (I guess ``sexual history'' wouldn't quite
capture the idea). In 2005, the USGA
approved transgender involvement in golf competition. Various rules
were devised to govern transgender golf competition, and Lawless was
required to provide doctor reports, lab results showing that her
hormone levels were within normal female limits, and had to submit to
onsite testing. Still, this is much like deciding to allow
participation by people who have used banned steroids -- the steroids
in this case are natural, but even after they have been flushed, many
of their effects remain.

Let's put it another way. Women who used to be men probably represent
a tiny fraction of women who play golf (or tennis, for that matter).
That even one should win a women's world championship suggests that
such women are statistically over-represented, which is as much as to
say they have a systematic advantage. Lana Lawless didn't break any
rules or laws. What some may regard as ``lawless,'' at least
relatively so, is the situation itself. Less than a month after the
Lawless win, the situation (the women's division championship) itself
went out of existence. For the official explanation, see the entry
for WLD Champion.

A very learned fellow, though not a medical doctor. Here are some
highlights and honors from his life (you can probably skip the first
item):

On Tuesday, October 18, 1898, at 8 pm, memorial services were held
in New York in honor of Prince Otto von Bismarck, who had died the
previous July 30. They were held at the Metropolitan Opera House, with
the assistance of Madame Johanna Gadski, soprano. Participating in the
services were the Liederkranz and Arion Societies, and the United
Singers of New York. The service was followed by a torchlight
procession that lasted from 10 pm to midnight. Here is the price of
seats, as given in the classified ad in the October 17 New York Times:

The headlined eulogies were delivered by Prof. Marion Dexter Learned
(in English) and by the Hon. Carl Schurz (in German). Learned's talk
was reported in detail; Schurz's talk was described in brief
generalities.

On July 9, 1900, Prof. Marion D. Learned was elected president of the
National German-American Teachers' Association.

On December 15, 1900, when the College Entrance Examination Board of
the Middle States and Maryland made public the Board of Examiners for
1901, Prof. M.D. Learned of the University of Pennsylvania was named as
the chief examiner for German. I'm sure you want to know the whole
list of chief examiners. You can find it at the
CEEB entry.

In 1909, a special Report to the New York Times, dateline May 1,
Berlin, reported that Prof. M.D. Learned of the University of
Pennsylvania and Prof. E.T. Pierce, President of the California State
Normal College at Los Angeles, were visiting Berlin. It was noted that
Prof. Learned had been honored with an invitation to deliver one of the
lectures at the previous week's annual celebration of Shakespeares's
birthday, held at Weimar by the German Shakespeare Society.

You know, if you only came here following a link to the stuff about
Professor Learned, you should scroll back up a bit and read about Nancy
Laytart. I think that's pretty cool, and it's more recent. See also
Billings Learned Hand.

This Learned was born in Alpena, Michigan, on June 5, 1876. He
doesn't seem to be any known relation of M.D. Learned
(supra), but he also went to
Germany to do graduate work (that was where to go) and he was also
involved in standardized testing (this was rather less common).

``William S. Learned served the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching as a staff officer from 1913 until his retirement in 1946.
During the third of a century of his professional labor as the
`Scholar of 522 Fifth Avenue,' he participated in generously financed
exploratory research as a member of the foundation's Division of
Educational Enquiry. ... His reputation was most widely based on
his work as founder and director of the
Graduate Record Examination....''

The quoted text is from page 9 of Paul Douglass's Teaching for
Self-Education As a Life Goal (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1960), a
biography of Learned.

Friedrich LESSER

Known as the king of physico-theology during its heyday (1730's to
1760's). His Lithotheologie [`Stone Theology'], a heavy tome
published in 1735, burdened the reader with over 1300 pages. It
explored the ways that stones -- even though we humans misuse them
-- allow us to marvel at God's wisdom. His Insectotheologie
(1740) accomplished the experimental confirmation of divine wisdom on
the basis of entomological speculation. You may be able to guess the
punch line of Snail Theology (1744), Lesser's 984-page joke.

Physico-theology was essentially worthless, and Lesser gave much more
of it.

The comparative and superlative (nonabsolute) forms of adjectives
present an interesting asymmetry: these forms are thought of as
expressing ``more'' of the same, even when the same expresses a notion
of less (privative). This is explicit in the periphrastic
forms: longer is more long, but shorter (less long) is also more short.
Fewer are less than few, but more few. (If you already knew what I
meant, then what I wrote won't have confused you.)

Julian L'ESTRANGE

Author of a small book entitled The Big Book of National
Insults, which consists mostly of quotes from literature and public
affairs in a jingoistic or xenophobic vein. The first section
dedicated to aspersions against a specific country is that for
France, naturellement.

The copyright is assigned to the publisher, and one might wonder
whether the author name is a pseudonym. The introduction, however, is
subscribed with the author's name and an unnecessarily specific address
in Greater London. Moreover, the same author is credited (I think
that's the word) with other works, including at least one book of
sports insults, and The Big Book of Sex ``Quotes'': 1001 Quips and
Quotes.

The illustrator of Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, or
Entertainment for Little Ones (a translation by Nancy L. Cannepa of
Basile's Pentamerone). In Italian, Lettere means
`letters,' and caramello `caramel, candy,' so with a little
license, ``carmelo lettere'' can be read as `I candify letters.'
And what the heck, Basile wrote in the Neapolitan language anyway.

A document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences. (She was in the news in September 2004. The
CBS TV show ``60 Minutes'' produced memos
purported to have been written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, one of George
W. Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973. They were quickly and widely
denounced as forgeries, and Lines was hardly the first to do so, but
she has the name.)

Linker also serves as a kind of human link -- between political
journals that don't have a lot of contributors (or past contributors)
in common -- because he's a political turncoat. Linker has had essays
published in Commentary,National Review, and The Weekly
Standard, journals with great prestige on the political right. He
was also published in the Wall Street
Journal, whose editorial staff leans right. From May 2001 to
February 2005, he worked at First Things, an important
politically conservative monthly with an emphasis on religion, first as
associate editor and then as editor. Then in 2006 he published The
Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. I don't think he's welcome
at his old haunts any more.

A securities analyst! On May 11, 1999, he provided the New York Times quotation of the day:

``Just as there is a lifelong search for the fountain of youth, there
is a lifelong search for an easy way to lose weight.''

He was commenting on the prospects for the then-new diet drug orlistat
(brand name Xenical), which had recently been approved for sale in the
US. Loss, with HSBC Securities, said it had ``the potential to be a
Viagra-type product in a different field.''

LOST City

On January 3, 1970, a meteorite was seen over a large area of
the US. Its fall was the first to be recorded by the Prairie Network,
a NASA-funded system of 16 cameras that had been operated by the
Smithsonian Institution's Astrophysical Observatory since 1964. The
path was photographed by two of the cameras (Hominy,
Oklahoma, and Pleasanton, Kansas). A trajectory and impact point were
estimated from these, and six days later Gunther Schwartz, the field
manager of the network, found the meteorite... near Lost City. The
meteorite, which turned out to be an H5 chondrite, weighed 21.6 pounds
(at ground level). It was estimated to have had a mass of about a ton
when it entered the atmosphere. On January 17, Richard Halpain, a
farmer near Tulsa, Oklahoma, while looking for a lost calf, found a
small rock that seemed to be charred. That turned out on analysis to
be a ten-ounce fragment lost by the same meteorite.

Lost City is a reasonably well-defined place, about 45 miles east of
Tulsa, OK. But if you went looking for a city there you might indeed
conclude that it was lost. Lost City is not an incorporated
municipality and as such has no official boundaries. It is the name of
a locally commonly recognized little concentration of human population,
and the US census bureau defines its boundaries for statistical
purposes. Within the 23.3 square miles of that
CDP, the 2000 census gave a population of
809.

Christopher LOVE

Grief-stricken after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
this alleged 43-year-old from suburban Philadelphia emailed Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein urging him to set aside his differences with
Washington and join a US-led coalition against ''terrorism, hunger and
strife in every country.'' Love is a software engineer, but he didn't
actually get ahold of Saddam's email address. He emailed the Iraqi
News Agency, which agreed to pass the message along. Love received a
reply from Saddam on October 18 (Reuters did not report the return
address)
calling him a ''brother in the family of mankind'' and expressing
condolences for the victims of the attacks. The pitiless torturer,
mass murderer, and ruthless dictator also wrote: ''God has created us
and to Him we return. May God give you a long life.''

Sometimes love is not all you need.

Jane LOVE

Barnes & Noble's religion-book buyer. She was quoted in an
April 16, 2009, Time magazine article on the latest ``Romance
Fiction Trend: Amish Love Stories.''

Dr. Susan LOVE

Susan Love, MD, is president of the Dr. Susan Love Research
Foundation. What with Dr. Phil and Dr. Ruth already out there (not to
mention Dr. Romance... at the
Desirable Men entry, for example),
this title might be misunderstood -- especially as the good doctor has
a book out called Dr. Susan Loves Breast Book. Oh wait, got
that wrong; it's ``Love's Breast.'' No confusion is possible,
then. Dr. Love has a project going called ``Love/Avon Army of Women,''
to recruit at least a million womens willing to consider participating
in surveys and other breast-cancer research.

Mildred and Richard LOVING

An interracial couple from Virginia who married in D.C. at a time
(1958) when interracial marriage was illegal in their home state.
After they returned to Virginia, they were arrested, pled guilty to
violating an anti-miscegenation statute, and were given one-year prison
sentences suspended on the condition that they leave the state. They
settled in D.C., but eventually their case became the nucleus of a
class action supported by the ACLU: Loving v. Virginia. The case
reached the US Supreme Court, which unanimously overturned their
convictions and found the Virginia laws to be in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Romans could have
told you: amor vincit statum virgineum.

Virginia, of course, was named after Elizabeth I -- ``the virgin
queen.'' In the 1960's or 70's, the state of Virginia began an
advertising campaign to promote tourism with the slogan ``Virginia is
for Lovers.''

Wanda LUCK

On Sunday, March 29, 2009, one Robert Stewart of Carthage, North
Carolina, went on a shooting spree at a local nursing home (Pinelake
Health and Rehab, specializing in Alzheimer's care), killing seven
residents and a male nurse and injuring several others. The carnage
would probably have been much worse at the 110-bed facility, but police
officer Justin Garner responded to the emergency call and won a
gunfight with Stewart. (Garner was shot three times in the leg and
Stewart took at least one bullet in the chest; both survived.) There
might possibly have been fewer innocent casualties had someone on the
staff had a gun.

Anyway, Wanda was very lucky not to have been there at the time,
because it seems she may have been a target. She and her husband
Stewart (the same) were recently estranged, and she was a
CNA on the staff at the home.

The German verb lugen, `to peek, spy' (cognate with English
look) gave rise to surnames Luger (see next) and Lueg. It is probably also
the origin of the less common surname Lueger. The plain sense
of the common nounLueger (or
Lüger) in modern German, however, is `liar' (from the verb
luegen or lügen, cognate with English lie).

In 1900, Karl Lueger was elected mayor of Vienna. He was the first
European politician to gain significant office with a prominently
antisemitic campaign.

In German, lugen is `to peek, spy' (cognate with English
look). A Luger is either someone who peers from a hidden
place (Leuer, which means and is cognate with `lair') or the
place itself. (The surname Luger is usually regarded as being
derived from the latter sense.) Georg Luger designed semiautomatic
pistols, manufactured from 1900 on, with 7.65 and 9 mm bores. The
Luger P-08 (first manufactured in 1908) was the German army's standard
sidearm during both world wars.

Charles Lumière ran a photographic firm in Lyon,
France, and his sons August and Louis worked
for him there, as a manager and a scientist, resp. After their father
retired in 1892, the brothers worked on the new technology of projected
motion pictures. (Specifically, externally projected motion
pictures. The Edison kinetoscope was a peep show.) The
Lumière brothers were not the first to invent such devices, and
Maximillian Skladanowsky was the first (beat them by almost two months)
to charge admission to view projected movies. However, the
Lumières' cinématographe was much more practical
than Skladanowsky's Bioskop, and it was their device that
inaugurated the successful commercialization of projected movies.
(There is also some question whether the Lumières'
cinématographe was the same as the
cinématographe patented earlier by Léon Bouly.)

Lumière means `light' in
French. It's not entirely relevant to
the people described in this entry, but I feel like pointing out, that
lumière in French has a range of meanings similar to that
of `light' in English. In particular, it refers both to light of the
sort that always travels at the speed of light, and to lights that are
relatively stationary and emit light of the other kind. There is also,
in English, what one might regard as a semantically offset ambiguity in
the word lamp, which conventionally refers to an device that
provides light, but may refer more specifically to the light source
that is part of the device. Anglophone lighting engineers have a
solution to this problem: they use the word lamp only for a
light source, and they use the French word luminaire for a
lighting unit, including one or more lamps as well as the housing and
related paraphernalia. For a bit more on the semantics, see the
LUZ item below.

That's Spanish for `Jesus Light.' I
am sorry to note that luz (in both
Spanish and Portuguese -- like
lumière in French, vide
supra) only has the meaning of
`light' in the sense of visible electromagnetic radiation and in
closely related senses, and not in the sense of unheavy or unserious.
That's too bad, because something like ``Jesus Lite'' would be a very
apt name for an idol of any sort who had a close relationship with (not
just any Italian madonna but the) Madonna (neé Ciccone),
a woman old enough to be his mother.

Madonna, as you probably know, is an adherent of a Hollywood variant of
Kabbalah, and Kabbalah is a Jewish thing. So the old Material Girl has
a lot in common with the Virgin Mary, who was Jewish (and probably
still is, by some accounts, though she is getting on in years) and had
a boy named Jesus. Jesus Luz, a Brazilian model, dated Madonna from
the end of the (US) fall semester until around
spring break, when she
announced the break-up during a ten-minute chat with fans on Twitter.
(No, I don't think he's still in school. He was 22 in most reports,
though one of his former girlfriends was still 18 when her opinions of
the Madonna fling were published.)

MACARTHUR

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards no-strings-attached
fellowships to people it deems impressively worthy. Informally,
these are known as the MacArthur ``genius grants.'' For the nomen
ain't omen content, please proceed now to the
invisible ink entry.

James E. MADDUX

Chapter two of Handbook of Positive Psychology, ed. C. R.
Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (Oxford Un. Pr., 2002) is his article
``Stopping the `Madness' : Positive Psychology and the Deconstruction
of the Illness Ideology and the DSM,'' pp. 13-25.

Three SHEPHERDS of MAD River Valley

Not a person, not even three persons, but an ill-omened name
nonetheless. A facility in Vermont identified only as ``plant number
50-50'' (sounds iffy to me) produced specialty
cheese under the name ``Three Shepherds
of Mad River Valley,'' using milk from sheep later suspected of having
been infected with a sheep version of
Mad Cow Disease. [That would
normally be scrapie, which is not known to be contagious to humans,
but it might be some new transmissible form
(TSE). See also
Douglass HOGG.]

STAFF Sgt. Michelle MANHART

A drill sergeant in the US Air Force was demoted to senior airman
and removed from extended active duty (reverting to Air National Guard
status) after posing nude and in uniform in a six-page pictorial, as
they're called, in the February 2007 issue of Playboy magazine.
Commenting on these actions to the AP
on Valentine's Day 2007, she said ``disappointed in our system'' and
that ``they went too far with it.'' She was shown in uniform, yelling
and holding weapons under the headline ``Tough Love.'' Other pages
showed her partially clothed and nude. After the issue was published
in January, Manhart was relieved of her duties pending an
investigation. She soon received a letter of reprimand. She claimed
that she was ``told'' not to talk to the news media; an Air Force
spokesman said that she was ``not prohibited'' from talking to the
media.

As of this writing, she is trying to resign from the National Guard,
and looks forward to pursuing a modeling and entertainment career. She
used the future subjunctive in commenting that ``my family is going to
stay here, but I do have plans to pursue anything that comes my way,
whether it be in LA or New York or Hollywood.'' Thirty-year-old
Manhart has two children; her husband is also in the military.
Manhart disappointed grammarians, who had started to become interested,
by continuing thus: ``As far as moving on in my life, I'm happy. I
hope this works out for my family and me.''

Jerome G. MANIS

Co-editor, with Samuel I. Clark, of a collection of gassy essays
called Man and Society: An Introduction to Social Science (New
York: Macmillan Co., 1960, when
Manis and Clark were associate professors at WMU).

Harvey C. MANSFIELD

Author of a book entitled Manliness. Mansfield argues that
manliness is an underappreciated virtue. His idea of manliness, by the
way, is not mastery of the manly arts (you know -- things like opening
jammed jam jars, carving the turkey, fixing the nuclear reactor). He
means something like ``confidence in the face of risk.'' (Oddly
enough, unreasonable confidence is known as ``cockiness,'' iirc.)
Anyway, he surely knows whereof he speaks: he's a conservative
professor of government in the belly of the leftist beast (Harvard U.).

Marcos is the Coptic form of English `Mark.' St. Mark
evangelized in Alexandria (which had a very large community of
Hellenized Jews) and is regarded as the founder of the Coptic Church.
Father Marcos (I hope that familiarity is not too presumptious; if it
is, I'll use Father Marcos instead) has kicked around -- he was at the
St. George Coptic Church of
Greater Philadelphia at one time, but is now, appropriately,
Hegomenos at a St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church (this
one in Toronto).

This name and that of former UNSecretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
suggest to me that repeated name elements are a relatively popular
style among Copts, but I'm not sure. All I can add is that
Boutros is the Coptic form of Peter (Greek Petros), and
that Boutros Ghali (born 1846) was a Coptic statesman. His
assassination on February 21, 1910, ``sparked serious quarrels between
Copts and Muslims, lasting throughout the years before World War I''
according to the article on him in (by Doris Behrens-Abuseif) in the
Coptic Encyclopedia (ed. Aziz S. Atiya).

There is also a Bishoy (Metropolitan of two or more places I can't
parse in Egypt; read it
yourself) who is listed by Amazon.com as an author named ``Bishoy
Bishoy Nicola.'' I suspect that this is just another instance of
Amazon.com's mangling of author names, and that other on-line
bookstores are following Amazon's lead error, but I don't plan to order
the book to find out. His original name was Makram Eskander Nicola,
and he was named Toma El-Souriani upon consecration as a monk. He
received a number of promotions, mostly reportedly against his will,
and at some point became Bishop Bishoy, before being elevated to the
rank of Metropolitan.

He is the illustrator of a new (in 2008) edition of Simone Ortega's
1080 Recetas de Cocina (`1080 Recipes'). According to a <CasaDelLibro.com>
newsletter advertising it in July 2008, this is the best-selling
cookbook in Spain. This edition features
500 original drawings and 104 color photographs and, as always, an
author with a French given name.

When I first saw the ad with Mariscal's name highlighted, my immediate
thought was that mariscos (loosely `shellfish') are a popular
food in Spain. The word marisco is a nominalized old Spanish
adjective meaning `marine.' The word mariscal is not. It's
another French loan, this one of maréchal. The
DLE, the TLF,
and the OED all agree on a Germanic origin
with the ultimate sense of `horse servant.' The marshal has evidently
come up in the world, over the past couple of thousand years. Perhaps
I should mention that the Spanish are sort of the Chinese of Europe:
they're, um, gastronomically adventuresome. So if we adjust the sense
to `horse server,' we have a more legitimate instance of nomen est
omen.

[The common Germanic etymology of marshall, maréchal, and
mariscal will be more intuitive if you remember the English word
mare. The Latin word mare, as
discussed at the mar entry, gave rise
to various other words besides marisco. A more precise
definition of mariscos would be `marine invertebrates,
especially edible crustaceans and mollusks.']

Matar is the infinitive form of a
Spanish verb and means `kill.' The
related word matanza is a noun whose meanings partly coincide
with those of the English noun `killing.' The feminine form of the
past participle, matada, functions primarily as an adjective,
with some extensions of meaning beyond `killed.' (For example, the
adjective sense of `boring' is attested in Cuba and Costa Rica.) If
the word matanza did not exist, matada might well have a
few of its noun uses. Nevertheless, matada does have one widely
used noun sense, attested in Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, and Venezuela
and regarded as a colloquialism: In those places it means a violent
blow or fall.

Jose Matada of Mozambique (if you're good I'll look up the meanings in
Portuguese) was a landing-gear stowaway on a Heathrow-bound jet in
September 2013. He fell out when the plane deployed its landing gear
on approach, at an altitude of 2000 feet. [Reports of
such incidents often include phrasing like ``fell to his death,'' but
the conditions at cruising altitude are vicious -- temperatures of
around -48 deg. F and pressures of about 0.3 atmospheres at 30,000
feet, according to the FAA -- so only that minority who aren't crushed
to death in the machinery and don't freeze to death or suffocate from
the low oxygen pressure may die by hitting the ground fast. The rest
are dead on arrival. I figure the ones who fall out near the
destination are more likely to be the ones who died en route anyway.]

On September 9, 2004, when Shawnta McBride married Robert K.
Konaido, she kept her maiden name. Between the following October 25
and June 6, 2005, she remarried five times at the Gwinnett County
Courthouse in Metro Atlanta, allegedly neglecting to divorce (or kill
or whatever) any of the husbands. On October 11, 2006, warrants were
issued for her arrest on five counts of
bigamy and false swearing. The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution later
reviewed state marriage records and discovered another couple of
marriages, one each in Cobb and Fulton. It was reported that the
``motivation for McBride's alleged numerous nuptials [was] unclear.''
However, Lorraine Stafford, Gwinnett's Probate Court administrator,
noted that of McBride's six grooms at Gwinnett, four were born in
Ghana, one was from Morocco, and one was a London native. As of July
2008, she was apparently still on the lam.

Gwinnett had some other bigamy cases in 2006 that issued in the arrests
of two men in September. Over the course of half a year Alvin Lorenzo
Murdock allegedly took six brides. Another, William James (``Woody'')
Fairley, married eight women over one year in Gwinnett alone. Mr.
Fairley, a cook in College Park, Georgia, married at least twice more
in Cobb County. Gwinnett issues close to 4000 marriage licenses a
year, so the three separate magistrates who each married him twice in
Gwinnett might be excused for not recognizing that Fairley, a 6-foot,
230-pound man with a thin mustache, was a ``regular.'' Of Fairley's
ten wives, six were from Ghana and the others were from Cameroon,
Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. They ranged in age from 28 to 45.

``Green-card marriages'' are not unusual, of course, but the usual
pattern seems to be for a broker to charge between $2,500 and $6,000
to match an individual US citizen, single, with a foreigner (often from
Ghana) seeking sham marriage and permanent residence.

Donald A. McQUARRIE and PETER A. ROCK

Professors at the University of California at
Davis, and coauthors of a college textbook published by W.H.
Freeman and Co., New York. Alas, it's an
introductory chemistry textbook. It doesn't say much about rocks or
petrology or quarries, but it does have the necessary elements.

Kendrick MEEK

A US representative from the state of Florida, he ``inherited'' his
seat from his mother Carrie.

Dr. Terry MEEK

I would hardly mention this moderately common name were it not for
the fact that he teaches chemistry in the same school where someone
with the slightly more common name of Coward (Mr. Adrian Coward)
teaches computer programming. (The school is
UWI.)

Dr. C.F. Menninger, and his sons Drs. Will and Karl Menninger, were
among the pioneers of psychiatry in the US, and in 1925
founded
the Menninger Clinic outside
of Topeka, Kansas. (The clinic has evolved into a number of related
institutions.) The meninges are the three soft membranes
that envelop the brain. Drs. Roy W. Menninger and W. Walter Menninger
(``Dr. Walt''), sons of Will Menninger, continuted to lead the
Menninger clinic.

An officer in the Royal Marines. In late 2009 he was promoted to
the rank of major general and achieved his life's nominal destiny by
being appointed lead spokesman on British operations in Afghanistan.
Cf.Larry Speakes.

In French I suppose désiré is the past
participle of désirer, `to want,' so the name
Désiré is a gerund meaning `the one who is
desired,' or, um, `wanted one.' The person who
originally bore this name eventually adopted a longer one:

I'm not really sure what parts of the name to highlight here,
because I lack the knowledge requisite to perform a lexical analysis.
This is the name that Joseph-Désiré Mobutu adopted
around the time that he renamed the Belgian Congo Zaïre. The Congo River became the
Zaïre River, but since the (former French) Congo is on the right
bank of the river, it's not so surprising that that renaming didn't
take so well. The name Zaïre was apparently based on a
Portuguese version of a local name of the river. All non-native place
names were also changed; the capital's name changed from Leopoldville
to Kinshasa. Christian given names were also banned. Part of the
national rebranding (an ``authenticity'' campaign) was the replacement
of Monsieur and Madame by Citoyen and
Citoyenne. This last bit is not entirely innovative. The
French Revolution adopted the same language reform, and until that
revolution really started to bare its fangs, it was a popular fashion
in New York City to use the appellations
Citizen and Citizeness.

Mobutu made some other cosmetic changes, the most immediately visible
one being the proscription of formal civilian Western attire in favor
of a tunic outfit called l'abacost (q.v.). (On the subject
of cosmetic changes, incidentally -- skin lighteners were illegal.)

The most fateful changes he made were not, however, qualitative
innovations. He and his mismanagement team, as we might say, were
corrupt and economically disastrous for the country in the usual ways,
only more so. Apparently the word kleptocracy was specifically
coined for his régime. He was usually aligned with the West
during the
Cold War, though he effectively played the two sides. In his early
days he is reputed to have played informant to Belgian intelligence,
the French were a solid ally, and he usually took the US side in the
regional skirmishes of the Cold War. He was rewarded with foreign aid,
at least. Therefore, all the bad stuff he did was the fault of the US,
and if it hadn't been for the CIA, the
former Belgian Congo would today be an advanced industrial democracy.

Anyway, enough trivia. The new name that Mobutu adopted for himself
(Sese Seko...) was typically described in news reports as having the
official or usual translation `the all-powerful warrior who, because of
his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to
conquest leaving fire in his wake' (with some variation in tense and
hyphenation). In case that looks embellished, I've also encountered
`the earthy, the peppery, all-powerful warrior who, by his endurance
and will to win, goes from contest to contest leaving fire in his
wake.' I should probably leave it at that, except to say that in May
1997, as a rebellion led by Laurent Kabila chased him from power, his
own elite guard, left behind, fired on the cargo plane he used to flee
the country.

But I just can't leave well enough alone. I'd figure that the official
translation, if there really was one, would be into French first.
French newspapers, it turns out, generally gave the official
translation as `l'homme qui vole de victoire en victoire et ne
laisse rien derrière lui.' English of that would have to be
close to `the man who flies [or flees] from victory to victory and
leaves nothing behind him.' Considering the thorough three-decade-long
looting of the country, the ``flees ... and ... leaves nothing behind
him'' was not far off the mark. Even the little economic
infrastructure left behind by the Belgians was mostly allowed to fall
into disrepair, and nationalization of foreign-owned businesses scared
away foreign investment (duh). And when he left, of course, it was
indeed a great victory -- for his decades-long adversary
Laurent-Désiré Kabila. If there is in fact a single word
that might be translated both rien (`nothing') and `fire,' it
might be ashes.

It would probably help to know what the source language was, so it
might help to know that Mobutu was a member of the Ngbandi tribe. I
see the word Ngbendu as part of his name. Perhaps some variable
interpolation took place in the translation process. That might begin
to explain the alternate translation that was often given: `the rooster
in the farmyard who covers all the hens' (`le coq de la basse-cour
qui couvre toutes les poules').

P. Moitrel d'ELEMENT

An eighteenth-century chemical researcher. Despite the auspicious
name, he's not widely remembered. He doesn't have an entry in even one
of the dozen or so major encyclopedias I checked. (That's not to say I
didn't learn anything useful. I learned that the mathematician Abraham
de Moivre was born to Protestant parents in Vitry, France, in 1667, and
took refuge in England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and
I learned that la Enciclopedia Italiana treats i and j as
equivalent in alphabetization. Just to be sure, I went ahead and
discovered that Dirk van Delen was a Dutch artist, main entry under
Deelen, Dirk van.)

Anyway, here's what I glean from Chronologie der
Naturwissenschaften, ed. Karl-Heinz Schlote (Verlag Harri Deutsch,
2002): in 1719 Moitrel d'Element described techniques for working with
gases over water. According to A Short History of Chemistry,
by J.R. Partington (various publishers, 3/e 1957; Dover reprint 1989):
``The manipulation of air over water was described by Moitrel d'Element
in 1719.'' Neither source gives his first initial. (I found that here;
for 3000 euros I can buy a book that contains various texts of Moitrel
as an appendix.) Apparently his work was entitled La manière
de rendre l'air visible and republished in 1777.

(Real name: Christopher Brian Moneymaker. His friends call him
``Money.'') He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the
University of Tennessee, then a master's degree (in what and from where
I don't know). He was working as an accountant and playing in online
poker rooms, and the prize in one
online tournament was a $10,000 buy-in to the World Series of
Poker. His father Mike Moneymaker and a friend really named David
Gamble put up some money to cover the cost for the trip in exchange for
a portion of his winnings. At the age of 27, he won the 2003 WSOP ($2.5 million).

MONKEY BUSINESS

The name of a boat. Senator Gary Hart of Colorado was photographed
there with a woman not his wife in his lap.

Nate MONTANA

Nate Monanta is the son of Joe Montana, standout quarterback at the
University of Notre Dame and Hall-of-Fame quarterback for the San
Francisco 49ers. The son also played quarterback and also went to
Notre Dame. At the end of the fall semester of his junior year he was
far down the QB depth chart at ND and transfered (begining of 2011) to
the University of... Montana. (He was red-shirted as a freshman, so
as a ``senior-to-be'' he has two years of elibility remaining. The
quarterback position is open at Montana because starter in 2009 and
2010, Oregon transfer Justin Roper, exhausted his eligibility.)

HUGH MOORE

Author of a book of poems entitled The Invited Guest
(Williamsville, Ill.: H. Moore [hmmm], 1994). Invited by whom?

HUGH MOORE of Carrington, Foster County, North Dakota

The University of North Dakota, Extension Division, has this
archival material: essays written by Hugh Moore, of Carrington, Foster
County, N.D., for correspondence courses in American government and
introductory poetry. Fifty items. Anybody is allowed to visit the
Department of Special Collections at UND and
just look at it.

HUGH MOORE (1887-1972)

In Easton, Pennsylvania, there's a Hugh Moore Park. The Lafayette
College Libraries, in the same town, are home to a ``Hugh
Moore Dixie Cup Company Collection'' of archival material spanning the
years 1905-1986. The ``bulk 1910-1955'' material occupies 42
linear ft. (39 record cartons, 6 oversize boxes, 7 file drawers). But
does it come with a convenient dispenser? The material ``[d]ocuments
the corporate history of the Dixie Cup Company and the role of its
president Hugh Moore, a pioneer in the paper cup and vending
industry.''

Easton was Hugh
Everett Moore's home from 1947 until his death in 1972, age 85.
Moore got into the paper cup business the same way Kellogg got into the
breakfast cereal business: practical idealism. Moore was in his second
year at Harvard in 1907 when he became interested in an idea of his
brother-in-law Lawrence Luellen: to replace the common (unsanitary!)
tin dipper with water vendors and individual paper cups. He gave up
his newspaper job and dropped out of Harvard the next year. You can
make money selling water.

He married in 1917 and had two sons (one named Hugh). From the 1940's
to the 1960's he was heavily involved with Planned Parenthood and other
organizations that oppose population growth.

HUGH MOORE (1808-1837)

Author of Memoir of Col. Ethan Allen, containing the most
interesting incidents connected with his private and public career
(Plattsburg, N.Y.: O.R. Cook, 1834). Okay, I'm not getting it.

Hugh Moore was also editor (1833-4) of the Burlington (Vermont)
Sentinel.

L. HUGH MOORE, Jr.

Author of Robert Penn Warren and History; the Big Myth We
Live (The Hague: Mouton, 1970 [1971]). I still don't get it, but
I think I can see a pattern developing.

He also coauthored A Concise Handbook of English Composition
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972) with Karl F. Knight.

On January 4, 2008, he allegedly lost control of his truck and
struck a mailbox, then a house. Moron, of Burleson, Texas, failed
sobriety tests at the scene, and his blood alcohol level was recorded
as being above twice the legal limit for driving. He was arrested at
the scene. He was also alleged to have been driving at a
high rate of speed when the
accident occurred. To be fair, there are plenty of other stupid things
he might have done.

Author of The Humanities in the Age of Technology
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. or Amer. Pr., 2002).
Morón is a MOULDS

Richard Moulds is the author of chapter 3 in the second volume of
Cognard: ``Design and Stress
Calculations for Bonded Joints'' (pp. 197-231).

One set of meanings of the word mould (spelled mold in
the US, but R.J. Moulds is British) have to do with giving form. One
who molds gives shape, paradigmatically to a viscous substance that
subsequently hardens into the imparted form. Moulds's chapter is
concerned with bonding by adhesives which are applied in viscous liquid
form and subsequently harden. Moulds is concerned specifically with
how the geometry of the bond -- the way the bond is molded -- affects
the strength of the bond.

Lorenzo MUSIC

He was a voice artist and a musician. Okay, okay, he was also an
actor, writer, and producer. And I have to admit that he wasn't born
``Lorenzo Music.'' He was born ``Gerald David Music.'' He changed the
name for spiritual reasons that I don't plan to understand.

MUTTWA

This appears to be a blend -- a ``port man tow,'' I think they
call it -- of mutt and fatwa. I'm not going to spoil it
for you here. When you're ready, go to this
paragraph of the AAA (for
animal-assisted activities) entry.

That was according to a New York Times Magazine article of March
10, 1996, pp. 37ff: ``The Morality of Fat,'' by Molly O'Neill, p. 38.
Update June 2007: It's now the ``Department of Nutrition and
Food Studies,'' and Marion Nestle is currently the Chair.

Friedrich NEUE

Neue is `new' in German. (It's one of the various inflected
forms of neu.) Friedrich Neue wrote Formenlehre der
lateinischen Sprache (`Morphology of Latin'), first published (by
H. Lindemann, at Stuttgart) 1861-1866. It wasn't a new topic.

Jay NEUGEBOREN

Neugeboren is `newborn' in German. In 1985 he
published Before My Life Began: A Novel.

Erine NEVERSON

Are you sure you want to read this? This is a rather sad story.

In a New York Daily News exclusive (July 15, 2002, cover and
p. 7), she is quoted as saying ``I want my son off the street, but I
don't just want him in jail. He deserves worse than that ... the death
penalty.'' Her son Andre Neverson, one of ten siblings, allegedly shot
his older sister Patricia in a dispute over money. Andre called their
father to tell him he'd never see his daughter again. ``He can't be my
son and kill my daughter,'' said Denzil Humphrey.

Author of Appeasing Hitler (MacMillan Pr. Ltd., 2000).
Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister who appeased Hitler
in the run-up to WWII. The best-remembered
bit of appeasement was the last: in negotiations at Munich, he and the
French agreed that Hitler could occupy the
Sudetenland -- the Bohemian part of Czechoslovakia with a large German
population (many of them German Jews trying to escape Nazi
persecution). In return, Hitler promised that he would not seek to
expand further. (He promptly expanded further.) Peter Neville's book
is not about Neville Chamberlain. Instead, it is a defense of
Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin during the height of
that policy. The book is subtitled ``The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile
Henderson, 1937-39.''

On page xii, Neville points out that in 1986, historian Edward Ingram
``compared Henderson's lack of competence and professionalism with that
of Shirley Temple Black.'' STOP RIGHT THERE! Praise by self-evidently
misguided criticism. Case closed.

NO-DONG

A North Korean intermediate-range missile. When first tested in
1991, it reportedly had a range of 565 kilometers. Since then, its
range is believed to have been continuously increased. In 2004 it
stood at between 1200 and 1500 km. I'm not exactly sure yet why I've
put this item in, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

J.F. von der NULL

Null was a Viennese banker. (Null is the standard way of
saying `zero' in German.)

A QB out of West Texas A&M who was
taken by the Saint Louis Rams in the sixth round of the 2009 draft.
Starting in place of injured quarterbacks Marc Bulger and Kyle Boller,
he made his NFL debut in the Rams' thirteenth game and
twelfth loss (this one 7-47) of the 2009 season. Null's jersey number
was 9; 0 usually follows.

The Rams were obviously ``struggling,'' as they call it, and had been
for a few years. It would be petty of me to wallow in this if I didn't
didn't point out that, although Null's rank among all those who have
ever played in the NFL is in five digits, to
reached that level of play is an enormous achievement, and his college
record in the Lone Star conference was epic, but now I have so it's
okay. Null tossed five interceptions in his first game, but closed out
his season (four starts) with only nine, and a won-lost record of 0-4.
He was picked up by the Carolina Panthers the next year and actually
made it on to their active roster. He never played in any more
professional games, though, so he never endangered his record of zero
wins.

Rep. David Obey (D-WI) is chairman of the House Appropriations
Committee as of 2009. The US Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 7) requires
that all revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Who
pays the piper calls the tune. (Yeah, yeah, appropriation isn't
taxation; it's still a very powerful committee.)

Jim Lovell, Commander of Apollo 13, selected names for the manned
portions of the spacecraft: ``Aquarius'' for the LM (see Aqr) and
``Odyssey'' for the command module (the capsule). As explained on p.
87 of Lost Moon (details at Aqr entry), Lovell chose the name
Odyssey ``because he just plain liked the ring of the word, and because
the dictionary defined it as `a long voyage marked by many changes of
fortune' -- though he preferred to leave off the last part.'' The
voyage of the Odyssey turned out to be more difficult and eventful than
expected.

Apolo Anton OHNO

A five-time (ahead of 2010 competition) Olympic medalist in the
sport of short track speedskating.

Oxford Latin Dictionary. Wait -- the antiquity gets worse. As the
entry explains, the dictionary is focused on classical Latin -- Latin that is relatively old.

MIDORI ONO

Midori is `green' in Japanese.
(At least it can be -- the name is written in hiragana.)
Ono is a `small field.' The person bearing this name is an
agricultural biologist, Ph.D. from
Univ. of Nebraska, dissertation on
insect resistance to pesticides. Not a relative of the next Ono,
AFAIK.

At the end of January 2002, the Catholic Diocese of Tucson settled
eleven lawsuits. The suits had been brought by men who had alleged that
as boys (mostly in the 1960's and 1970's; one case from the 1980's)
they had suffered sexual abuse at Our Mother of Sorrows. Four priests
were named as abusers in the cases, which began to be filed in the
1990's; the diocese was accused of being aware of some of the abuse and
taking no action. The two priests still surviving in 2002 had been
suspended in 1991 and 1992. In a rare action requiring Vatican
approval, in 2004 they were laicized -- ``defrocked,'' in the
unfortunately apt conventional term. (The only one of the four who was
also accused of sexual misconduct with an adult has the surname Teta,
which means `teat' or `tit' in Spanish.)

The sorrow doesn't end there. At the time the laicizations were
announced, a number of lawsuits were still pending; in September 2004,
the diocese filed for bankruptcy, saying it needed court protection
because of legal costs from sexual abuse lawsuits.

Josh OUTMAN

A professional baseball pitcher. He reached the bigs in 2008. In
2008 and 2009, he played for the Oakland A's. I can't give details of
his career in 2010 and later years, because I'm writing this in 2009,
so those are ``out years.''

Paracelsus was the name taken by Theophrastus Bombast von
Hohenheim, a name which merits its own separate discussion. The
name Paracelsus is intended to mean `the equal of Celsus.'
The reason this is ironic is that Paracelsus spent much of his
(chemically) sober time vehemently denouncing ancient physicians like
Celsus, and eventually Paracelsus himself came into ignominy, even
among most of his own students.

Paracelsus was the first enthusiastic champion of ``better living
through chemistry,'' During his journeyman years, he took an interest
not only in matters directly of medical importance, but also in mining.
See Agricola.

A celebrated barber-surgeon who served kings Henry II,
Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III... of France. [Pare was actually
Paré, which has many meanings (among them `pared,' though
only in certain animal contexts). I'm going with the English.

He is often described as having been a keen observer, and he left many
colorful writings. Here is his description of a comet that appeared in
1528 (when Paré himself was about 18) quoted in English
translation by Robert S. Richardson in his The Fascinating World of
Astronomy (McGraw-Hill, 1960), pp.162-3:

This comet was so horrible and frightful, and produced such great
terror among the populace, that some died of fear; others fell sick.
It appeared as a star of excessive length and of the color of blood; at
its summit was seen the figure of a bent arm holding a great
sword in its hand, as if about to strike. At this point there
were three stars. On both sides of the rays of this comet were seen a
great number of axes, knives, spaces colored with blood, among which
were a great number of hideous human faces with beards and bristling
hair!

Vice Admiral Pared was the Director General of Migration (the top
immigration official) in the government of the Dominican Republic, as
of January 2011. He was in the news because of criticisms by Amnesty
International and other groups (usually unnamed, but including the
Jesuit organization in D.R.). They criticized the Dominican Republic
for resuming enforcement of its immigration laws a year after the most
recent major Haitian humanitarian disaster. (That would be the
earthquake of January 2010, unless you count the cholera epidemic that
had so far killed 3000 in Haiti and sickened 150 in D.R. The main
stated motive for renewed enforcement was the desire to quarantine that
epidemic.) Pared said that the crackdown was urgent because a massive
entry of Haitians always occurs in January. (It wasn't stated
explicitly, but the impression was given that Haitians come in larger
numbers then because they can blend into the increased traffic of
Dominicans returning from vacationing in Haiti.) Anyway, pared
is Spanish for `wall.'

He was born Donald Lytle, and recorded under another name or two.
It's hard not to suspect that the Paycheck name was an attempt
to cash in (sorry) on the name of fellow country superstar Johnny Cash (just as the name ``Chubby
Checker'' was created in conscious imitation of ``Fats Domino'')
However, the story goes that he took the name after a heavyweight
boxer, best known for being knocked out by Joe Louis. Run that by me
again? The name also resembles his family's original Polish name. (This last does in fact
account for many Paycheck surnames.)

As far as pop is concerned, Paycheck was a one-hit wonder in 1978 with
the name-consistent ``Take This Job And Shove It,'' but his usual work
is considerably bluesier, reflecting his life, which has
given a lot of material for both blues and reflection.

A prolific author, known among other things for his work on ancient
plants. The word pease is an ancient, or least old, name for the plant
we now call pea.

The 1951 issue of HSCP was devoted to this
scholar, and a list of his publications found there includes ``List of
Plants on Three Mile Island,'' in Appalachia, vol. 12
(#3), pp. 266-76 (1911). The Three Mile Island he investigated is not
the famous one in Pennsylvania but the one in the Lost River region of
Maine that was owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club, based in Boston,
that published Appalachia. Information on Three Mile Island is
available
online.

In volume 15 of HSCP (1904), pp. 29-59, he had article entitled ``Notes
on Some Uses of Bells Among the Greeks and
Romans.''

Pennington was with the Parker Pen Co. Ltd. (Parker of Canada,
headquartered in Toronto) for a ton of years. Almost twenty-five
years, in fact. He was president when he retired in May 1959. He
was replaced by Philip Hull, who had been a vice prsident of the Parker
Pen Company in Janesville, Wisconsin, since 1953. Pennington stayed on
as a consultant in Canadian affairs.

Mrs. Pepper was once head of the Consumer Section in the Marketing
Service of the Canadian government's Department of Agriculture, in
Ottawa. I really don't know much else about her besides the fact that
she was an
associate delegate to the Conference of the
FAO, Ninth Session, held in Rome, November 2-23, 1957. (Three
weeks! Ahhh -- dem wuz de days for guvumint jobs.)

We were throwing out a block of earnest booklets of good advice called
Better Buymanship Series, published by
Household Finance Corporation and edited
mostly by its Consumer Education Department (some, like #8, ``Better
Buymanship, Use and Care: Furs, are credited to the Department
of Research). Generally speaking, I feel better if I can salvage some
utterly valueless datum out of any printed material before it is
recycled, and I noticed that Mrs. Pepper was acknowledged as a
consultant for the booklets
``Money Management: Your Shopping Dollar'' (copyright 1950 HFC)
and ``Money Management: Your Food Dollar'' (copyright 1951 HFC).
She was already chief of the Consumer Section in those years. She was
even acknowledged in the 1947 ``Better Buymanship, Use and Care:
Dairy Products'' (another from the Research Dept.). She had the
same job title, but HFC listed her then as at the ``Dominion Department
of Agriculture.'' The reasons for this, if any, are probably lost to
history, but history doesn't seem very concerned about the loss.

Proof that if you make a good name for yourself, you can have a
sixteenth minute of fame. You can hear
her voice here. She says ``toh-maahh-toe.''

Paul PIERCE

Boston Celtics star who was attacked by three men at a bar in 2000.
He suffered a collapsed lung after being stabbed eight times (he
was also hit on the head with a bottle).

Wrote a classic book of New England loggers' lore entitled
Spiked Boots (self-published, 1956). He went on to write the
definitive history of the New England logging industry Tall Trees
and Tough Men (1967). Died 1997, age 92; obit in the 1997.08.11
NYT.

A pike is basically a pole with a sharp end, possibly barbed. If you
knew anything about medieval warfare, you wouldn't have to ask.

He wrote a five-screen
article for <Slate.com> entitled ``An American Barbecue
Pilgrimage.'' The slug was ``What 15 Barbecue Meals in a Row Did to My
Digestion.'' He ate them in seven days; his ``lower intestine ground
to a complete stop,'' and he had a slight pain in his chest. In
Yiddish, plotzen is `to explode.' In English the word is
typically used in humorous hyperbole; e.g., ``if I eat any more I'll
plotz.'' (The word is onomatopoetic, first attested in German in 1320
or earlier, as a noun for a rapid, generally loud movement. The only
survivals in standard German are the adjective plötzlich,
`suddenly,' and its derivatives. The word Plötze, for `red
carp,' is an unrelated Slavic loan.)

Mary I of England during her brief reign (1554-8) temporarily
reestablished Catholicism in England, and she made Pole her archbishop
of Canterbury. The first to be burned at the, uh, stake was John
Rogers, close assistant of William Tyndale's (see WTT). About 300 other Protestants followed,
including 5 bishops, 100 priests, and 60 women. Many others went into
exile or hiding. Mary I was her father's (Henry VIII's)
daughter, and
this persecution was surely unobjectionable if turnabout be fair play.
Whatever the case, about 1500 monks, nuns, and friars had survived the
Protestant reigns. When Pole tried to restore monasticism, he
discovered that fewer than 100 of these (about 6.7%, MoE 2.6%) were willing to return to celibacy.

David POLING

A pollster [coauthor with George
Gallup, Jr. of The Search for America's Faith (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1980)]. Probably has bad spelling. We also serve a barge pole entry.

A Denver man who worked for the Regional Transportation District,
Porch was dropped off at home after working the graveyard shift, where
he dropped on his own front porch and eventually died.

Porch, 46, might not have died had his collapse occurred any other time
of year. He died on Friday, November 2, 2012. When the mail carrier
came by that morning, he saw Porch on the steps of his porch but
mistook him for a mannequin left over from Halloween. Porch's grown
son found him an hour later, around noon, but efforts to resuscitate
Dale Porch were unsuccessful. The family speculated that, had the
mailman called for help, he might have survived. They noted that the
body was still warm at noon. But, FWIW, if his was any normal kind of
graveyard shift, and if the ride home was not extravagantly delayed or
long, then he had probably been lying on the porch for a couple of
hours before he was ignored by the postman.

R.E. Powers discovered two
Mersenne primes, the 10th and
11th in the series of Mersenne primes. The Mersenne primes are prime
values of Mersenne numbers, and
the nth Mersenne number is one less than the nth power of 2. The
primes discovered by Powers corresponded to the powers, i.e.,
the exponents, n = 89 and 107. He discovered them in 1911
and 1914, and they were quite a feat of human computational power: they
were the last Mersenne primes to be discovered by direct manual (as
opposed to, you know, digital) computation.

This item is not exactly NSFW, but if
LOL is inappropriate where you are reading
this, then steel yourself.

On April 29, 2014, Donald Popadick was arrested for exposing himself.
Initial reports (see CTV
here and Globalnews.ca
here) did not detail which part of his anatomy he exposed, but the
act was alleged to have been performed at Mooney's Bay Park (in Ottawa,
Ont.), so I think we have the main possibilities, er, covered. Also,
the news was tweeted for the Ottawa Police Service by Sgt. Iain
Pidcock. I'm
going to call that a hat trick.

Although it is difficult to determine the exact national origins of the
name, it bears a close similarity to Popadi&cacute;, a village in
central Serbia.

FWIW, final &cacute; in Serbo-Croatian is pronounced like an English
``ch,'' but in my experience -- in the US, but I suppose it's a general
Anglophone pattern -- the common -i&cacute; ending (originally
patronymic) is often mispronounced ``-ick.'') I can't parse the
village name Popadi&cacute; entirely, but in the languages of European
nations that are traditionally Orthodox Christian, as well as in
Hungarian, names that begin with p-o-p usually refer to the common word
pop that means `priest' in Slavic languages (from the Greek word
pappas, `father,' originally better translated `dada' or `papa'
-- also the
source, via Latin, of `pope' in English).

John H. POYNTING

Recognized in 1884 that E × B is a measure of
electromagnetic power flux density. I.e., it is a vector
pointing in the direction of electromagnetic energy flow.

Another point about 1884 is that in that year, the Washington
Monument was capped with a pyramid of cast
aluminum. That monument is far the highest structure in the area,
so it must function as a lightning arrestor. That represents a lot of
electromagnetic flow too.

Father and son (resp.) who founded a low-price outlet (a
big-box store) called ``Price Club'' in 1976. Details at this PriceSmart
page. For another instance of chain-store-founding nomen est
omen, this one traditional-style retail, see J.C. Penney.

The man who murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June
1914. After the suicide of the Emperor's only son, Crown Prince
Rudolph in 1889, the line of succession of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
shifted to the Emperor's brother, Archduke Charles Louis. The death of Charles Louis in 1896
made his son Franz Ferdinand next in line to the throne, effectively
the crown prince. Hence, in 1914, a man who was named `prince,' but
who was not, murdered a man who was not named `prince,' but who was.
Chiasmus caused WWI. FWIW,
Gavrilo is a form of the name Gabriel, an archangel.

(If you want to get technical, ``crown prince,'' as an ordinary
compound noun rather than as a royal title, is applied to a male heir
apparent, and not necessarily to a male heir presumptive. Franz
Ferdinand was only heir presumptive: Emperor Franz Josef, who turned
84 in 1914, had been a widower since the 1898 assassination of Empress
Elizabeth. If he had sired a son, that would have trumped [not
a technical term here] the archduke's
claim.)

It seems to have become something of a tradition for Habsburg royals to
be predeceased by the violent deaths of their partners. Crown Prince
Rudolf shot one of his mistresses to death before killing himself; it
was reportedly a suicide pact. Gavrilo aimed for Franz Ferdinand but
shot his wife Sophie in the abdomen first; the second shot mortally
wounded Franz Ferdinand.

Gavrilo Princip was a member of the Black Hand, a terrorist group that
sought unification of Slavic peoples in a greater Serbia. Why does
this sound familiar? Anyway, Princip and the other assassins (one
lost his nerve, the bomb of a second bounced clear and exploded under
another car in the motorcade, others bided their chance) all were given
cyanide capsules. In those days, the suicide component of terrorism was
explicitly understood as a precaution to protect the secrecy of the
rest of the terror group, or infrastructure, as we now say.

A New Zealand philosopher generally credited with the invention
of tense logic.

Tense logic dines on operators such as `It will be the case that' in
the way that modal logic sups on `It must be the case that.' If you
don't know what modal logic is, then this is probably not much help.
Okay look, it's like this: in traditional logics, concepts of time
occur in the propositions, which are timelessly true. For example: it
is always true that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE. Temporal
logic can qualify truth values in time, and consider the question
whether it is true in 50 BCE that Caesar will cross the Rubicon. I
don't know; it seems pretty obvious that this kind of logic can only
be approximately coherent. As we have known since 1905, ``before''
and ``after'' are not attributes solely of the events they describe,
but also of the observer -- the frame of reference. [For example, if
your July 1, 52 BCE (the kalends of July) coincides with Caesar's
kalends of July, 52 BCE (i.e., if you two synchronize your water
clocks then), but if you happen to go off and approach the speed of
light shortly thereafter (a constant acceleration of one g starting in
August will do nicely), then Julius will cross the Rubicon long before
49 BCE, your time. (Of course, in your frame of reference July was
Quintilis and
August Sextilis; but in Caesar's, Quintilis became Julius no later than
44 BCE.)] In other words, relativity makes virtually any proposition
that is not true a priori undecidable in a tense logic with only
two truth values. I suppose it must be fun as a mathematical exercise,
at some time. Sometimes it's called temporal logic. (Maybe you should
see the
entry on modal logic after all.)

The first significant presentation of a tense logic was in Prior's
Time and Modality (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1957).
One of Prior's main expositions of tense logic was Past, Present and
Future (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1967). Prior died before his
Worlds, Times and Selves was published in 1977. He died too
early -- aet. 54 (born 1914, died 1969).
Come to think of it, so did Caesar: the March he died was in 44BCE, so
he died before Sextilis was Julius. It wasn't called 44 BCE either.
You know, this isn't logic; this is just making unnecessary
difficulties.

One of Prior's more generous contributions to my amusement was
published in Analysis, vol. 21, #2, pp. 38-39 (December
1960). The title was ``The Runabout Inference-Ticket,'' and he
commented (I mean: it is true now that he commented then) that he
(I think it was him) was ``much helped in [his] understanding of the
notion by ... some notes of Mr. Hare's.''

Later in the same volume (pp. 124-8), J. T. Stevenson replied with
``Roundabout the Runabout Inference-Ticket.'' Is it too late to give
these people a speeding ticket?

She's in broadcast journalism. I'd like to tell you how long her
candle has been burning, but the effort to find that out isn't worth
it. You'll have to draw your inferences from the following.

The movie Journey among Women was released in 1977. Here's a
bit of Australian
government-sponsored synopsis: ``In the earliest years of
Australian settlement, Elizabeth Harrington, a high-born and headstrong
young woman (Jeune Pritchard) helps a group of convict women to escape
constant rape by their jailers.'' Also, Pritchard was doing rock music
reporting at least as far back as 1973, when she interviewed
Lillian Roxon. Roxon died young, FWIW, later that
year. (To be fair, she had already been in declining health before the
interview.)

A basketball player who starred at the University of Maryland in
the mid-1990's and made it into the NBA.

The Einstein's-birthday edition of the Atlantic (well, it was
dated March 14, 2012) had an article by Patrick Hruby entitled
``Basketball Players of the NCAA, Unite!'' Hruby made the case that
the college basketball players are sorely exploited and should strike
for fair compensation. The only NBA player interviewed for the article
was Profit, and one can't help wonder if his name hadn't something to
do with that. He was quoted saying ``We never talked about a strike,
but we used to have the whole compensation discussion. We're the ones
in practice, going through drills. But it's the coaches making
millions--not only off their university contracts, but also through
shoe deals and talk shows. Meanwhile, we were getting penalized if we
took an extra pair of sneakers.''

Her Guided Tours of Hell was published by Metropolitan in
1996 or 1997. In a short review for the 1997.02.10 Newsweek, Laura
Shapiro says it consists of two novellas described as ``buoyant'' descriptions of ``dark
nights of the soul in Paris and Prague.''
That would sound oxymoronic to anyone
but a sadist. Anyway, I don't think Prose is a pseudonym.

A former RCMP officer who became a
community organizer in the immigrant-rich area of Montreal North.
Gosh, those community organizers are everywhere. Prosper was a
candidate for the Québec Solidaire party in the 2012 Quebec
elections on September 4. In the event, Prosper did not prosper, but
his party doubled the number of seats it would hold in the next
provincial legislative assembly (called the National Assembly of
Quebec) -- soaring from 1 to 2 (out of 125). The two co-leaders of the
party, both running in Montreal, each won their ridings. Next time
they should make all their candidates co-leaders. Then they will
prosper. (Sorry. Had to do it.)

PROTAGORAS

Ever been to Speaker's Corner (by Marble Arch)? I've seen him
there. At least I think it was him. It was Greek to me.

Coauthor with Sidney Greenbaum of A Student's Grammar of the
English Language. I could probably have finished the subentry at
that sentence, but I noticed that the copyright page contains the
following line:

(The book is essentially an abridged version of A Comprehensive
Grammar of the English Language (1985), on which the authors had
worked in collaboration with Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartik. I assume
the 1900 is just a typo -- possibly the fault of the Chinese printer.)

Born on June 28, 1946. On July 1, 1946, the US conducted an atomic
bomb test at Bikini Atoll. The bomb was
named ``Gilda'' after the
motion picture in which Rita Hayworth played the title role. (It
was in the film noir genre.) The movie was filmed in Argentina,
whose name means `[of] silver.' The name ``Gilda'' suggests
gilded. (No, I don't know whether the movie played a role in
the naming of Gilda Susan Radner.)

``Rad,'' ``radn.,'' ``rad-n'' and similar forms serve as abbreviations
for ``radiation,'' which killed over 300 experimental animals and
sickened many others in that test at Bikini. FWIW, Gilda Radner's
ultimately fatal cancer was treated with radiation therapy (as well as
chemotherapy).

The rad is also a unit of radiation exposure. If the test
animals had been men then rem might have been a more informative
unit (rem stands for ``Röntgen-equivalent man'' -- a measure of
radiation exposure computed with an energy- and particle-dependent
scaling). If Gilda had been a man, it's not likely that she
would have died of ovarian cancer. (I know this is in poor taste, but
we artistic types must have our liberty. It's edgy humor. She'd have
appreciated that.)

Well, he's not unusually angry, that I know of, but he does have a
grievance, it has something to do with the religion of Mohammed, and
he's with a bunch of people with blood on their hands. You can guess
his line, but probably not correctly. Give up? I know, you probably
have some other guesses. Give up. Current events furnish a lot of
ideas. No, no, still wrong. I say: give up!

Okay, it's this: Rage (I don't know how that's pronounced) is a
community leader with the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization,
and he's serving as an advocate and spokesman for Muslim workers at the
JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking
plant in Grand Island, Nebraska. In September 2008, those workers
sought break times to allow prayer at sunset during Ramadan. I infer
that some accommodation was made, as some non-Muslims were claiming
that their Muslim co-workers were getting preferential treatment.
There were walkouts during the week of September 14, and Rage said that
nearly 200 Somali Muslims have been fired. At the time, the company
was confirming 86 firings.

Tom RAKEWELL

An eighteenth century rake in Pamela. Nomenclature is destiny remarkably
often in seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction. Incidentally,
Pilgrim's Progress was the first book (apart from the Bible)
to be translated into a Dakota language after missionaries had
developed a writing system for it. (Don't look too hard for
connections here. I just personally happen to associate Pamela
and Pilgrim's Progress, mostly because I read them at about the
same time. That's how it goes.)

RAPIDES Parish

According to The Trucker (``America's Trucking Newspaper'')
vol. 13, no. 16 (July 31-August 13 edition), this county (Louisiana
counties are called parishes) has the most expensive speeding tickets
in the US. Going 65 in a 55 zone costs $171 (including court costs).

RAT

Recovery Accountability and Transparency. There's a RAT, actually
a RAT Board, in the ``Recovery'' bill that was passed by the US
Congress in February 2009. It didn't sneak in on its own, like any
ordinary self-respecting rat. It was snuck in. Read more at the
RAT entry.

Romuald RAT

The first photographer at the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car
crash in a Paris tunnel. While still there, he sold the exclusive UK
rights to the pictures to the Sun over the phone, for 300,000
GBP. He then tried to, in his words, ``do something positive'' (for
the victims!) by shooing away other photographers. Mr. Rat made the
phone deal with Ken Lennox, the Sun's picture editor, who agreed
in principle pending receipt of the pictures. At the time, Mr. Rat
reported that Diana looked lightly injured. The Sun cancelled
its agreement when Diana's death was announced. Alas, as Mark Anthony
eulogized, the good that princes do is oft interred with their bones.

Tom RATH

A Republican functionary from New Hampshire. He was appointed by
the Bush #43 White House to lobby Republican senators on behalf of
unqualified Supreme Court justice nominee Harriet Miers. ``Lobby'' is
not quite the right term, of course; Rath's task was to advise the
senators that they would feel the wrath of the White House if they
opposed her nomination. Rath is an old-fashioned spelling of
the German word now spelled Rat, meaning `advice.'

[ALTO REED]

This name is here only because this is where you might think to
look for it, but it's not an instance of nomen est any kind of
omen. It's a stage name. Alto Reed is the long-time
saxophonist of Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band. He's done other work
for which he is less well known, always with a tenor or alto sax. The
saxophone is a reed instrument. His official website is
a myspace page. His real
name is Tom Cartmell.

MARC RICH

A rich fugitive from the law. He made the news in the closing
hours of the Clinton administration by earning a pardon the
old-fashioned way -- by paying influence brokers and raining charity on
unsuspecting marks who responded with ignorant character references.

JUSTIS Ellen RICHERT

The offstage name of Barbie Cummings. What she does with the stage
name, as she explained to the Tennessee state trooper who pulled her
over for going too fast, is ``make dirty movies.'' The officer, whose
nickname is ``Randy,'' expressed regret that he hadn't gotten into that
line of work. He might as well give it a shot now (sorry), since he
lost his gig with the highway patrol.

When he asked her if she had any drugs in the car (a pink Honda
Accord), she admitted that she had some ``happy pills.'' (As
she explained on her blog later that evening, she would take one or two
of these sometimes before going to a club.) Many news reports describe
the pills as ``illegal narcotics'' and also as ``prescription pills.''
Possibly they were prescribed in some way to someone, and possibly they
were narcotic, but Justis and the Department of Safety definitely agree
that they were illegal, and there was no mention of drugs in the
citation resulting from the traffic stop.

According to her blog (taken down shortly after this story broke) or to
the video interview she gave to the Knoxville News Sentinel, he
pointed out to her that a drug charge would prevent her from traveling
out of state. She started crying and explained that she has to commute
to Los Angeles for her work. (According to an article I read in the
early 1990's, the industry is actually concentrated along Van Nuys
Boulevard north of the hills, but I guess such precision is not
required. I think the article was written by Shere Hite and appeared
in the Atlantic; will check.)

That was not the end of his investigation. Indeed, his probe expanded.
Back in the squad car, he checked out her website and they watched sex
videos on a laptop computer. His laptop.

He eventually decided to toss her pills in the brush by the side of the
road. Mr. Romance also asked her, ``What does it cost for someone like
me to get anything like you?'' I'd like to mention here that
Richert is a form of the name Richard, but it is also possible
to construe it as `enriches.' [That is the meaning of the German word
reichert. If the verb were conjugated with a stem change (and
historically perhaps it was), that would likely be spelled
richert.] Many news reports described Justis (i.e.,
``Barbie Cummings'') as a ``star'' of pornographic movies. (I think
that articulates with ``starlet'' or ``co-star'' in less X-ly rated
movies. If they use the missionary position, I suppose this is a
supporting role. Sorry, sorry -- I couldn't restrain myself.)

Later, they went to a secluded place outside the car, where she thanked
him for not giving her a ticket for the drugs. In her words ``I
offered him an oral favor as a nice gesture.'' (We're not talking
about a mint candy here.) Also, she (he, in some reports)
apparently took video of this gesture, and she posted stills on her
blog. Then, ``[h]e called me the night after it happened and asked if
he could tell some of his co-workers and give them my website. [I
can't give a rational explanation for this.] I said sure.'' Maybe she
should have said ``You have the right to remain silent. Anything you
say can and will be used against you in a court of law....''

The traffic stop took place on May 7, 2007. The next day an internal
complaint was filed against the trooper. Talk about moving fast! On
May 24, the trooper (James ``Randy'' Moss -- I was holding back on the
full name until I could think of a way to wedge in a
rolling-stone-gathers-no-moss angle, but I didn't get lucky) received
a letter of termination; charges were pending. A week later, he was
allowed to resign rather than be fired, and it was reported that he
would not be charged for throwing out the ``small amount of drugs.''

Justis said she planned to appear in court to address the speeding
charge (92 in a 70 zone; she was hurrying to her aunt's house). You
know, if you contest the charge and the citing officer doesn't show up,
you usually get off, in a manner of speaking. Contrariwise, if you
don't show up to contest the charge, then you don't, even if the citing
officer has been terminated. That's apparently what happened to
Justis when she failed to appear for her hearing on June 29; she
consequently had to pay her $159 speeding ticket, within two weeks.
Some 16 other motorists did show up, however, and had their tickets
dismissed.

After Moss resigned, other women (none of them porn stars) came forward
with allegations that Moss had behaved inappropriately during traffic
stops; in many instances he had reportedly asked to see their breasts.
Look, I know this is a pathetic entry, but you don't have to read it.
The DA was said to be planning to file
misconduct charges although some of the complaints were said to be too
old to prosecute. Not all, however. In October 2007, Moss was
arrested after a grand jury indicted him on 10 charges related to his
traffic stops. The charges included tampering with evidence, official
misconduct, and official oppression. Moss was booked into the Wilson
County Jail and later released on a $2,500 bond. The following
January, he agreed to a plea deal which keeps him out of jail if he
stays out of trouble during a term of probation (this is a typical
``diversion'' agreement).

Salza is a fair pun on salsa, the Italian word for `sauce.'
The word ricotti (I don't know in detail about the surname) is
virtually the same as ricotta: both can be translated as
`recooked,' `reheated,' `annealed' vel sim. (The -i is the
typical plural male ending and -a the singular female. The distinction
is not reflected in translation, of course, because each English
adjective has a single form that agrees grammatically with any noun.
The -i at one time functioned as a nobility marker in Italian
surnames.) Ricotta is made by reheating whey.

Don RIETH

According to the Rieth-Rohrer-Ehret
Funeral Homes homepage, ``In 1963 Bob [Ehret] opened the Rieth
Rohrer Ehret Funeral Home in Goshen [Indiana] with the help of Don
Rieth & Wally Rohrer. In 1967 he acquired the Lienhart Funeral
Home in Wakarusa.'' Interesting how the name ordering went. Anyway,
judging from a radio ad I heard, the surname
Rieth is pronounced ``wreath.''

J. Thomas RIMER

Coauthor, with Robert E. Morrell, of Guide to Japanese
Poetry. (Rhyme plays a relatively minor role in Japanese poetry.)

CLAY RISEN

He wrote an article for Popular Science magazine entitled
``How To Build A 2,073-Foot Skyscraper: Inside the construction of the
Shanghai Tower'' (all capitalization sic, from the
webpage). [Article posted March 11, 2013; from the URL I suppose
it appeared in the February issue.]

A roach bomb, or cockroach bomb, is a fumigation device. The name
was chosen, so I understand, because after it has taken effect the
roaches are supposed to be lying around dead, looking as if a
roach-worldly bomb had been set off.

The fumigation involves a propellant, and the propellant is typically
violently combustible. Here are a few unplanned ignition experiments
involving these devices.

In 1946-47, Tennessee Williams wrote ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' while
living in a third-floor apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
On March 12, 1995, a woman who had just rented the apartment set off
six aerosol cans in the 8-by-10-foot kitchen (recommended treatment is
one can for a 20-by-30-foot room). The fumes were apparently ignited
by the water-heater flame. The tenant suffered cuts and bruises in the
explosion, as did a passer-by who was struck by a falling door.

On December 13, 1995, a homeowner performed this standard experiment
in absentia. He left his home in Cessnock, near Sydney,
Australia, after setting off a roach bomb within. When he returned
later that evening, the house had burned down. On the 30th of the same
month, in nearby Burwood, a woman placed a bomb in a cupboard in her
laundry room. Fumes leaked out and were apparently ignited by the
nearby water heater.
Senior firefighter Mick Holton was quoted as saying ``[i]t literally
looked like a bomb had gone off.''
Pest control expert Shane Clarke was quoted as saying that such
explosions were ``reasonably common.'' (I suppose this depends on what
you think is reasonable.) Burwood Fire Brigade had once earlier
responded to an explosion that occurred when a roach bomb placed in the
back of a truck was apparently set off by the heat of the engine.

With Billy Graham and Rex Humbard, Oral Roberts was one of the great
pioneers in televangelism. It was Roberts who made the great discovery
that people are more willing to cough up money for big
bricks-and-mortar projects than for things like money to stay on the
air. Hence, Oral Roberts University and its ``Prayer Tower,'' and an
ambitious building campaign that included his City of Faith Medical and
Research Center, founded in 1981 and closed or repurposed in 1989...
In the 1980's he was hamstrung by something like a Laffer curve for
charitable donations: to increase contributions, he started devoting a
larger fraction of his air time to
schnorring, until the whole show was
nothing but a hectoring appeal for money. This from a fellow who had
pioneered the use of secular entertainers to hook audiences. From 1980
through 1986, Roberts lost 59 percent of his audience. In the late
1980's he also suffered from the general erosion of,
uh, faith, due to the scandals swirling
around various other televangelists.

A nine-hundred-foot vision of Jesus had assured him that the medical
center would be finished, and a message from God told him that ``the''
cure for cancer would be found there, but faith was not enough: he
needed money, and in 1987 he announced that if he didn't raise $8
million quick, God would ``call me home.'' (He made other, similar
appeals, on TV and by mail. Televangelists never ask just once.) He
eventually was called home -- at least he departed -- on December 15,
2009 (Cupcake Day). According to
ORU's page about him, at
the time of his death he had ``13 grandchildren, one of whom is in
heaven...'' Certainty is one of the benefits of faith.

Back when I was in grad school, one of the Dans I knew in the Music
Department was a composer -- named Dan. It seems that one of his
life-changing experiences was working as a clerk in a bookstore. It
was not a university bookstore. Guns
and Ammo was popular there. One day someone came in wanting a
copy of ``Oral Roberts' Rules of Order.'' He was bound to be
disappointed.

A thirteen-year-old girl from Bristol Connecticut who was attacked
by a red-tailed hawk while on a school tour of Fenway Park, the home
field of the Boston Red Sox. Her scalp was bloodied, and she was taken
to a hospital by ambulance and released later the same day (April 3,
2008). A teacher who chaperoned the class trip said that Alexa was ``a
little shaken,'' but not seriously injured.

The hawk, whose mate flies the
official team colors, is clearly an avian member
of Sox Nation, and was evidently confused. The hawk meant to attack
Alex Rodriguez (``A-Rod''), a star Yankees hitter. The hawk had
attacked a photographer in the park a day or two previously. I wonder
what's going on at the Seattle football field.

According to wildlife officials, the hawk has built nests in the park
since 2002, though there the hawk had not laid a (literal) egg until
2008. This is not a picture of
reproductive success. A single egg was found in this year's nest,
which was located in an overhang near the stadium's press booth. The
nest and the egg were removed ``in hopes of keeping the hawk away.''

``Roe,'' like ``Doe,'' is a fictitious surname used in courts to
preserve the anonymity of vulnerable parties and when a proper name is
not known. The famous case of Roe v. Wade was a class action with
``Jane Roe'' as lead plaintiff against Henry Wade, the Dallas County
(TX) district
attorney charged with (in the sense of being entrusted with the
responsibility of) enforcing Texas abortion laws in Jane Roe's
jurisdiction. He was the same DA who had earlier prosecuted Jack Ruby
for murdering Lee Harvey Oswald (before Oswald could be prosecuted for
the murder in Dallas of US President Kennedy). I believe you may be able to find
some information on the web regarding Roe v. Wade. The case was
appealed up to the US Supreme Court, where a 7-2 majority decided,
among other things, that an implied right of privacy in the US
constitution guaranteed the right of women to choose an abortion during
the first trimester of pregnancy. (Since that time the Supremes have
ruled in about one abortion case per year; the resulting penumbra of a
shadow of law is not easily summarized without undue burden to myself.)
The decision made abortion legal and eventually fairly widely available
throughout the country. (It had already been legal in a growing
number of states.)

[The Jane Roe in this case, Norma McCorvey, revealed her identity
publicly in the 1970's when she wrote an autobiography (I Am Roe: My
Life, Roe v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice). This apparently made it
easy for her to get work at clinics where abortions are performed, a
step up from the bartending and carnie work the ninth-grade drop-out had
been getting before. She was working at a Dallas women's clinic when
the pro-life group Operation Rescue moved its offices next door. She
struck up an acquaintance with Rev. Phillip Benham, Operation Rescue's
national director, whom she would meet when she went outside for
cigarette breaks.
Eventually
she became a born-again Christian and a pro-life activist.]

The Roe v. Wade decision had many political effects. One intriguing
effect is a demographically mediated backlash. It seems reasonable to
assume that women who are pro-choice will be more likely to take
advantage of the abortion option opened by the decision, and would
therefore have fewer children, on average, than they would have had
otherwise. The Roe Effect (or better Roe Effects) refers to the
electoral consequences of that demographic shift. The earliest effect
is that relatively liberal ``blue
states'' will tend to have a lower rate of natural increase than
otherwise, lowering their electoral clout in the
House of Representatives and in the
Electoral College (see EV). If one
assumes not unreasonably that the children of conservative parents (or
socially conservative parents, or at least pro-life parents) are more
conservative than the aborted children of pro-choice parents would have
been, then a second effect is that the electorate as a whole, in all
states affected by the Roe v. Wade decision, drifts further right, or
less far to the left, than it would have absent that decision.

The nomen est omen aspect of this is just that the named effect
arises when large numbers of potential offspring are prevented from
entering the population. Roe are fish eggs, and as caviar and similar
foods, they are also prevented from maturing. (Of course, they are
normally harvested before fertilization.)

Well, she doesn't anymore, as she died in August 1973, but
otherwise the name is rather apt, and long antedates the term ``rock
music.'' She was sometimes described by the epithet ``Mother of Rock
Journalism,'' and Robert Milliken's biography of her had the title
Lillian Roxon, Mother of Rock (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2002). A
documentary film written and directed by Paul Clarke had the more
felicitous title of ``Mother of Rock: Lillian Roxon.''

Roxon was born Liliana Ropschitz in Alassio, Italy, on February 8,
1932. The family immigrated to Australia in 1937 to flee fascism and
antisemitic laws. In November 1940 the family
Anglicized their name to Roxon. The name was little Lillian's
suggestion. She became a journalist, and from the late 1950's was a
New York-based correspondent for various Australian publications,
becoming the first full-time female employee at the Sydney Morning
Herald's New York office. During the 1960's she became interested in
rock music. She became part of the rock music in-crowd and wrote
serious rock music criticism when I suppose that may have been a rare
thing. (Maybe it still is.) In 1969 she published her now famous
Rock Encyclopedia. It was republished in 1971, and posthumously
in 1980 with revisions by Eddie Naha. Finally in 2013 I bought a copy
for a dollar, hence this note.

Partners in the law firm of
Rush,
Rush, and DeLay, with offices in
Paris... Arkansas. Also in Fort Smith and
Ozark. They handle both civil suits and criminal defense, and for all
I know they have served as outside counsel to prosecutors.

There's an ancient legal maxim that ``justice delayed is justice
denied.''
The idea is partly codified in statutes of limitation and in laws
requiring that arrestees be charged or released in a timely manner.
There are also stipulations in some laws that defendants pleading
certain extenuations must announce their intention within a certain
period of being charged. For statutory reasons like these, both
defense and prosecution (or plaintiffs) often want to act quickly at
the beginning of a legal proceeding. That's two ``rushes.'' On the
other hand, once the technical requirements have been met, the reality
of the maxim would seem to dictate that any party not interested in
justice would prefer delay. Delay as a defense strategy is described
by Arthur Train in his My Day
In Court. That's one ``delay.'' (The main cause of delay
seems to be the bottleneck of packed court dockets. But maybe this
isn't the law firm's responsibility.)

Laura Safe is a morning newsreader at a radio station in
Birmingham, England. On January 16, 2013, she was walking down some
steps while texting her boyfriend, and did not fall down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, she continued texting as she walked to the
edge of a canal and fell in. She was rescued immediately. She was
quoted in The
Sun: ``I thought ice on the canal was pavement because it
looked dark in the corner of my eye,'' she said. ``I heard a man call
out `stop' to me and I looked up at him, but it was too late by that
point.'' She was not hurt, and while trying to avoid falling she did
manage to save her handbag and mobile phone. She got a lot of ribbing,
and later even she twittered ``Oh dear. I should really be called
Laura UNsafe after the day I've had! Lol.'' This isn't fair. Okay,
so she ended up cold, wet, and ridiculous -- but she and her precious
effects were safe.

It surprises me that no one suggested that perhaps there ought to be a
barrier there. It reminds me of a book by Daniel Patrick Moynihan with
the somewhat apposite title of Traffic Safety and the Health of the
Body Politic (1966 -- possibly his first). I don't have the book
to hand, and I'm paraphrasing roughly from memory, but in it he
commented that with millions of cars on the road, collisions are not
accidental -- they're statistically inevitable.

Eliza Mary Ann SAVAGE

Miss Savage was a dear friend of Samuel (``Erewhon'') Butler, and
the model for angelic Alethea Pontifex in his The Way of All
Flesh. In a letter to him on Sept. 15, 1877, she wrote

And now, my dear Mr. Butler, let me give you a little good advice. If
you wish to make yourself agreeable to the female sex, never hint to a
woman that she writes or has written `with care'. Nothing enrages her
so much, and it is only the exceptional sweetness of my disposition
that enables me, with some effort, I confess, to forgive this little
blunder on your part.

He could have used this
Apology Letter Generator, or maybe flowers. There has been much
speculation about why they didn't marry, and whether either of them
wished they had. Apparently Butler felt that he was expected to make a proposal, but he
didn't want to. He made a lot of excuses to himself about it, and
after she died he set aside the Way manuscript largely because
it called up painful memories of Miss Savage. One of his last literary
acts was to assemble and edit his correspondence with her; Way
was published posthumously. To the extent that anyone can say this for
anyone else, it seems fair to say that he loved her. It was suggested
by some that he didn't ask because she wasn't pretty
(litotes alert).

A strange lady giving an address in Zurich wrote him [Shaw] a proposal,
thus: `You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most
beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child.'
Shaw asked: `What if the child inherits my body and your brains?'

Interestingly, this seems to repudiate Shaw's neo-Lamarckianism
(expounded in the preface to ``Back to Methuselah''). Samuel Butler
also had heterodox ideas about inheritance and evolution, which
Way was intended to illustrate.

Linda is `beautiful [female]' in Spanish. The German words related
to the root schade- all have to do with some kind of harm,
as discussed at schade and
subsequent entries (Schaden and
Schadenfreude). (First
two of those links still to come, but soon.) The word
schade is also the form of two conjugations of the verb
schaden, `to harm.' One occurs in the indicative mood: ich
schade means `I harm.' German also has a ``weak subjunctive'' that
is used for a kind of streamlined quoting that looks more like
paraphrase. To illustrate the use, I give three ways of saying the
same thing in German, with translations to English (the last uses the
weak subjunctive form schade):

In the US presidential election of 2000, Democrat Albert Gore won a
thin but clear popular majority over Republican George W. Bush. Ralph
Nader, as the Green Party standard-bearer, ran a distant third. Still,
he received far more votes than any other third-party candidate, and
far more than the margin of difference in votes between Bush and Gore.
It is reasonable to suspect that if Nader had not run, a large majority
of the votes cast for him would have gone to Gore. One percent or so
of the votes cast for Nader would have given Gore Florida and the
election. (More on this at the EV entry.)

In 2004, Linda Schade was a spokeswoman for Ralph Nader's presidential
exploratory committee. On February 20, a Friday, she announced that
on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' the following Sunday, Nader would ``be
discussing his role in the presidential election.'' She said that
``[h]e's felt there is a role for an independent candidate to play.''
Spoiler.

Of course, if you were for Bush, this was beautiful. The following
Sunday, to no one's surprise, Nader announced that he would run.

Born Regina Ann Schock. Best known as the long-time drummer for
the Go-Go's. (The original drummer, when this girl group formed in LA
in 1978, was Elissa Bello; Schock replaced Bello in the summer of 1979,
was drummer until the group disbanded in May 1985, and has played drums
in all or most of the reunion tours.) According to a
concert review by Joseph Szadowski in the June 14, 2011, Washington
Times, Go-Go's guitarist Jane Wiedlin has called her ``the
`thumpiest' drummer in the world.'' (I can't find this anywhere else;
perhaps Szadowski heard it directly from Wiedlin. My own vote, at
least among groups with female lead vocalists, would go to Alex Cooper,
drummer for Katrina and the Waves.) Anyway, if Schock plays any of
those new-fangled electronic percussion instruments, more power to her,
so to speak.

The name means `black shield' or `black sign' in German. Karl
Schwartzschild is best known for discovering a solution of Einstein's
field equations of general relativity. The solution describes an
uncharged, non-spinning black hole.

A physicist involved in fertility
research. Proudly acknowledges the term eccentric. Announced in
January 1998 that he wanted to clone a human. Didn't say which one, at
first, then said he would clone himself first.

This is one of the holy trinity (any resemblances to Roman
Catholicism are completely coincidental) of Hindu gods --
Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. As any standard text will tell you, these
correspond respectively the creator, destroyer, and preserver gods
(a+, a, and a+a)
(e.g., Sakurai: Advanced Quantum Mechanics, p. 27).
I don't know about the others, but it seems apparent that Shiva,
the destroyer, got his name from the seven-day Jewish mourning
period known as Shiva. [Actually, my grandfather was
born in the shtetl of HaShevata, but the only apparent connection
is the number seven.] For another completely fatuous Indic-Semitic
connection, see the Halaka entry.

Incidentally, many westerners who encounter the
creator-destroyer-preserver description may wonder why the big
cults worship Shiva and Vishnu, while Brahma (creator) gets short
shrift. It may be helpful to rephrase things thus:

A runner who specialized in the longer events -- mostly the 10,000
meters and Marathon.

James T. SHOTWELL

A peace activist whose influence (along with others') issued in the
Kellogg-Briand Pact (a/k/a Peace Pact) of 1928. Eventually, most
militarily formidable countries signed it.
(The US Senate
ratified it with reservations.) Although the Pact text does not
contain the term ``self-defense,'' it was understood to outlaw only
wars of aggression and not self-defense.

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand had already shared the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1926 with German FM Gustav Stresemann. [Briand and
Stresemann had negotiated the Locarno Pact in 1925. (That was a
non-aggression pact between their two countries; Briand got to sign it
as French Premier late in 1925.)] In 1929, US Secretary of State Frank
Kellogg got his own Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Paris Pact.

In 1931, Japan invaded China. Japan was a signatory to the Paris Pact,
and was consequently in violation of international law! The Paris Pact
has no enforcement provisions.

Mark SHUTTLEWORTH

A South African millionaire who paid about
$20 million to ride a Soyuz rocket to the international space station
Alpha and stay for eight days. On April 25, 2002, he became the second
space tourist (the first was California equity
fund manager Dennis Tito). Okay, he didn't take the shuttle to the
space station, but the parts from which the station was assembled were
largely brought up by shuttle.

NASA doesn't like this little side business of the Russians, because
it makes it too obvious that an astronaut is basically a ``man in a
can'' or ``spam in a can'' (the original form and the coiner of the
expression are uncertain; the Chuck Yeager character speaks the latter
form in The Right Stuff). Carrying tourists takes the glamour out of it, makes it look like
something even a septuagenarian ex-Senator could do without endangering
his health. Mark was probably shuttle-worthy too.

Scott SICKO

``Some people will think I'm absolutely out of my mind, and I
understand it,'' said Sicko to Mark McGuire of the Albany (New York)
Times Union. They were speaking on Saturday, April 24, 2010, after
the NFL draft had ended with Sicko, a tight
end at the University of New Hampshire, not
drafted. What many people thought was crazy, just literally mentally
ill, was Sicko's decision not to pursue his options in the NFL as an
undrafted free agent, given that a number of teams had expressed
interest and that Dallas had assured him that he was likely to earn a
spot on their roster.

Jaime LACHICA CARDINAL SIN

Archbishop of Manila from 1976 until his death in 2005. He used to
greet first-time visitors to his home in Manila with the words
``Welcome to the house of Sin.'' Why didn't he say ``of Cardinal
Sin''?

Arguably the most influential bishop of the post-Vatican-II era in
Asia, Cardinal Sin played a major role in bringing down two
Philippine presidents. (That sounds better than it looks.) In both
cases, their successors were women. La chica means ``the girl''
in Spanish.

Jean-Michel SIX

As of late 2011, Six was Standard & Poor's chief European
economist. Starting in early 2009, European leaders had a series of
summit meetings to solve sovereign debt problems in the euro-zone.
In December 2011, Six commented that ``[a]fter a series of `final'
summits, it would be nice this time to have a real `final' summit.''
A New York Times editorial on December 9 began, ``We're losing count of
how many European Union summit meetings have ended with `historic'
agreements...'' The number was five.

A career coach and the author of Escape from Corporate
America (2008). (Her
blog here.)
The word skill occurs a little less often than I would have expected
in the many interviews she has given. Anyway,
here's
a quote for the sake of the entry:

In order to position yourself for a career change, you have to
understand how to communicate the value that you can provide in a new
role. What are the existing skills and qualifications that you can
leverage? What are some possible weaknesses and how can you present
them in the best light? Why should an employer or investor want to ally
with you and your brand?

John SKIPPER

Skipper is a captain of the entertainment industry. The
official
bio at ESPN (viewed November 2017) describes him ``taking the
helm as ESPN president and co-chairman, Disney Media Networks on
January 1, 2012....'' Sorry, I couldn't resis adding the italics.

SLAGTERSNEK

On March 9, 1816, on a hastily-erected gibbet, five Boers condemned
to death by the British colonial government were hanged at Andrew's
Post in Slagtersnek. It wasn't a straightforward execution. On the
first drop, only one of the men died. The other four men's ropes broke
and they fell to the ground. The gathered crowd, which included
relatives forced to attend, called the rope breaks a sign from God and
pleaded for the lives of the survivors to be spared. The government's
agents, Cuyler and Stockenström, did not have the authority to
commute the sentences. They also didn't have any spare rope, so the
broken ones were knotted together somehow and eventually all the
condemned men were hanged.

Slagtersnek means `butcher's neck' in Afrikaans. The Afrikaner
side in that war memorialized the events of Slagtersnek as a war
atrocity.

Kevin Slowey is a pitcher. He went to Winthrop University after
high school, and entered the Minnesota Twins farm system via the 2005
amateur entry draft. He was brought up to the majors for the 2007
season. I'm still trying to find the ``slow'' angle. He's not
particularly a change-up pitcher... yet. Going into professional
baseball straight from high school is the fast track.

Author of Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring,
Coaching and Keeping the Best People (Prentice Hall, 1999). His
The Smart Interviewer: Tools and Techniques for Hiring the Best
came out in paperback in 1990. Excuse me, but this is even more
disgusting than Ashley Brilliant.

ADAM SMITH

This is a proleptic entry. The late 20th-c. author of various
books and articles on economics who publishes under the name ``Adam
Smith'' is not an instance of nomen est omen. Instead, he is
George J. W. Goodman, who first used that pseudonym for a column in
New York magazine in 1966. (Goodman was a co-founder of that
magazine as well as of New West and New Jersey Monthly,
and he has been a member of the Editorial Board of the New York Times.
Some egregious New-ness.)

R.E.F. Smith

Professor Robert (``Bob'') E.F. Smith of Birmingham University (in
the U.K.) was the author of over ten major books, including A
Russian-English Dictionary of Social Science Terms (London,
Butterworths, 1962). It's found in the reference section, where the
cataloguing labels on the bindings begin with ``REF.''

Jeff SMOKER

A Michigan State University quarterback
who had a substance-abuse problem reportedly requiring in-patient
treatment during November 2002. His substance problems that
fall ``coincided'' with a dreadful season. (I guess it was a
``coincidence,'' neither the QB's problems nor
the team's problems affecting the other.)

SNEEK

The name of a Dutch town sixty miles northeast of Amsterdam. A
resident of that town, a twenty-year-old hacker who goes by OnTheFly,
was arrested Valentine's Day
2001 on charges stemming from the Anna Kournikova computer virus.

Peter SNELL and John WALKER

Olympic track stars for New Zealand in the 1960's and 70's.
In various Germanic languages, snell means `fast' (cognate of
German schnell). (The word snail has an unrelated
etymology.)

Snell won gold in the 800 meters at the Rome Olympics of 1960, in
record-setting time. He successfully defended the 800-meter title at
Tokyo in 1964 and went on take gold in the 1,500 meters as well.

In 1928, the Snows made a documentary about an Arctic expedition.
Some of the least important details that you could imagine -- and yet
survive to tell the tale -- are dumped in the
GWN entry.

WINDOW SNYDER

Window Snyder is a computer security expert who works on Windows
systems. As a Microsoft security strategist, she was responsible for
security sign-off on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003.

Traditionally, protection against sophisticated forms of crime has
required the kind of expertise found mostly among the criminals. For
example, forgers and con artists are among the best detectors of
forgery and fraud. Thus, law enforcement and private security
organizations regularly turn to, or try to turn, criminals and former
criminals. (Sometimes this can be quite problematic. It can create
legal incentives for making progress in illegal activities.)

In computer security, although the legal issues are occasionally
cloudier, it is also common to hire foxes to guard the henhouses.
Window Snyder is one
such fox, and she has been particularly involved drawing hacker
expertise into the security community. The surname Snyder is one form
of the common Germanic occupational name meaning `tailor,' written
Schneider
in German. Literally, the word means `cutter,' and that's a fair
synonym of hacker. In September 2006, Mozilla
Corp. hired Snyder to lead the efforts to secure its open-source
software, particularly its Firefox browser. The principal strategy
that she
mentioned, when her appointment became official, was cutting:
removing old code whose cost in vulnerability is greater than its value
in functionality. I despise that. It's the same philosophy that has
turned cars into nannymobiles. You can't do anything unless it's
something that a designer decided millions of other users would also
want to do.

Born Brenda Julietta Song. I guess she's known primarily as an
actress, but she's done some singing. I've never heard her, but
according to her IMDB
bio, she has a trademark husky voice. Okay, I have now seen her in
a YouTube
video; so now I guess I know what ``husky'' can mean. But the
important thing is that she makes it possible to say "Song sang,"
"Song sings," and even "Song sings a song" and easily make sense. And
if you can't hear the capitalization, that makes it mildly intriguing.

Sôrós means `heap' or `pile' in Ancient Greek. On
the other hand, sorós, with the first vowel an omicron
rather than an omega, was `vessel.' Mostly it referred to a cinerary
urn, and it was used as a nickname for old men and women (examples
occur in the writings of that funny dead white guy Aristophanes).
George Soros turned 74 in 2003.

Actually, George Soros was born George Schwartz. (In Hungary, so maybe
that was György Schwarcz or Swarcz or similar.) When he was a
boy his parents changed the family name to the vaguely
Hungarian-sounding name Soros. George's dad was an active Esperantist,
and in Esperanto the word soros is the future tense of the verb
`to soar.' What is this, a hat trick?

Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. This pun works best if
you don't palatalize the word suit.

Kevin SPACEY

In the 2001 movie
K-PAX, he plays the lead role of Prot, a patient at a mental
hospital who claims to be from the distant planet K-PAX. He doesn't
look alien... He's beginning to convince his psychiatrist (Jeff
Bridges playing Dr. Mark Powell).

An actor who played the title role in a 2001 movie entitled Joe Dirt. It was
rated PG-13 for dirty language (``crude & sex related humor,
language''). A spade is an implement for moving dirt, but as Spade
shares writing credit for the movie, this is not a clear-cut case of
nomen est omen. The promotional posters showed Joe Dirt holding
a wet-mop. The Joe Dirt character is a janitor with a dream to find
the parents who abandoned him at the Grand Canyon when he was a child.

Speakes graduated with a BA in Journalism from Ole Miss in 1961.
He worked in journalism (mostly editing and managing) until 1968, when
he found his metier as press secretary to Sen. James Eastland (D-MS).
After working as a coordinator in Eastland's successful reelection
campaign in 1972, Speakes started working in the executive branch.
He mostly held press-secretary positions with Republicans in or running
for executive office. (He worked for a private PR firm during the
Carter administration).

James Brady was President Reagan's first press secretary; he was
crippled in the assassination attempt on Reagan on March 30, 1981, and
was unable to return to work. However, he retained his title, and
Larry Speakes filled in, handling daily press briefings under the job
title of ``Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press
Secretary'' (from June 17, 1981) and then ``Assistant to the President
and Principal Deputy Press Secretary'' (from August 5, 1983, until
January 1987, when he resigned and was succeeded by Marlin Fitzwater).

Aaron SPELLING

This is sort of a borderline case. One of the shows he produced,
Charmed, has some spell connections. It's mentioned at
the alternate Spelling entry.
On the other hand, Spelling was so prolific that it's probably not
statistically significant. When Charmed began it was only one of eight
of his shows on TV (in production; say nothing of reruns).

Margaret SPELLINGS

A Texas educrat chosen by Pres. G.W. Bush to be US Secretary of
Education in his second term. She succeeded (spelled, if he
should return) Dr. Rod Paige (pronounced PAGE), another former Texas
educrat, who served in that post in Bush's first term.

A senior employee of RWE
Thames Water, the London water supplier and one of the largest
water utilities in the world. As of 2003, as Climate Change Client
Manager for UK Water Industry Research, one of his main
responsibilities is to find ways to conserve water resources.

When I get around to finding out what RWE stands for, I'll mention that
in its own entry. Another water utility is Vivendi, mentioned at the
A&M Records entry.

SAM SPRING

The 2020 winner of the Analyst of the Year award of (UK)
Association of Mining Analysts. He works at Ocean Equities. Well
(I wrote well), the water from some springs empties into the
ocean.

That reminds me, and you'll doubtless be interested to know, that the
German morpheme cognate with the English suffix -some is
-sam, as in the word langsam, `boring.' That reminds me
of a Feb. 1861 diary entry of Dimitri Mendeleev (yeah, the periodic
table guy): ``I was forced to talk to Germans. Boredom.'' No
disrespect to Mr. Spring, BTW. The stream of consciousness meanders
where it will. Often it doesn't even reach the sea. The -dom suffix
in English corresponds to -tum in German.

The German cognate of sea is interesting enough to have its own
entry in this glossary (low bar, I know). That entry will say:
Die See
(i.e.,See as a feminine noun) is `the sea, the ocean';
der See (masculine) is `the lake.' (See is pronounced
``Zey,'' approximately.)

PRIMUS ST. CROIX

A man arrested in May 2000 for vandalizing statues at several Roman
Catholic churches in Brooklyn over the previous year. He said God had
told him to do it, and cited the biblical commandment against graven
images as a motivation of his sledgehammer protest against idolatry.

In
Aristotle's model of the universe, a concentric sequence of
``crystalline'' (hard transparent) spheres held the planets and turned
them around the earth (at the center). The rotation of the various
spheres in this Russian-doll model was driven by the outermost sphere,
which was turned by a ``prime mover.'' When Aristotlian philosophy was
``rediscovered'' and reintroduced from the Moslem world in the latter
half of the Middle Ages, Christian theologians syncretized this model,
making of the outer sphere heaven, and of the prime mover God.

Stark is a German adjective meaning `strong,' but the
English sense of the word seems apposite as well. One Friday, July 18,
2003, in the US House of Representatives, a Ways and Means Committee
mark-up meeting became very heated. In the course of bitter partisan
maneuvering, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Hayward, CA) objected when committee
chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield, CA) tried to cut short the formal
reading of a contentious pension bill. (This was important, but the
reasons don't concern us here.) In reaction to the Stark outburst,
Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) reportedly muttered ``shut up.'' The quoted
words, though plausible and not denied, afaik, do not appear in the
meeting transcript. According to some reports, Stark had been giving
his uncomplimentary opinion of the intellect of Scott McInnis. The
transcript did record the Stark reply:

You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on.
Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake. You
little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake.

Later, on the House floor, McInnis (age 50) stated that he had
interpreted the Stark remarks as ``serious. I considered the threat a
bodily threat.'' McInnis is a former state trooper, so he might have
some relevant experience to back up the claim. Denying that his
remarks had implied a threat of physical violence, 71-year-old Stark
said:

I'm an elderly gentleman. I haven't been in a fight involving bodily
contact in sixty years. Look, I fall trying to put on my underwear in
the morning.

WILLIAM STEVENSON

Author of A Man Called Intrepid (1976), about the British
counterintelligence chief William Stephenson who was based in New York City during
WWII. Stevenson is Canadian. He's not related to Stephenson.

Stock (1876-1946) was a German chemist who in 1919 published a
suggestion for the naming of ionic compounds. He suggested that when
the cation is an ion of a metal with two or more possible valences
(besides zero), the name of the metal should be followed by the
(nominal) positive charge on the cation in parentheses. Thus,
Fe2O3 would be iron(3)-oxide and FeO would be
iron(2)-oxide, instead of ferric oxide and ferrous oxide respectively.
The main advantage and disadvantage of the system is that it helps
simpletons to understand and do chemistry.

Some German commission took up the suggestion in 1924, but recommended
the use of Roman numerals instead of Arabic, and a space instead of a
hyphen (but, just as in Stock's suggestion, no space between the first
parenthesis mark and the name preceding it). Hence, CuO is copper(II)
oxide (instead of cupric oxide). Stock's simple system is congenial to
German, which resisted the adoption of Latinate chemical terminology.
Sadly, the system has come into general use.

It's hard to think of something more embarrassingly trivial to be
famous for, and Stock's name has been deservedly condemned to the
immortality of faint praise. The clumsy practice (in the form
recommended by that German commission) is sometimes referred to as
Stock's system or the Stock System. More frequently, the Roman numeral
is referred to as the Stock number.

After a night of drinking that began on July 27, 2002, Johnny
Joslin, 20, and Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, were seated at a table
outside a trailer park. It was Sunday morning, and they were in a
heated argument about religion, specifically over which of them would
go to hell and which to heaven (they apparently didn't expect to meet
in the hereafter). Stoker, a Johnson County (Texas) corrections officer, said he would settle
the argument, went into a house and returned with a shotgun. (This
sounds like it was scripted. Was the presence of the necessary house
introduced earlier in the story?)

Stoker loaded the gun and placed it in his mouth. Then Johnny Joslin
pulled the gun out of Stoker's mouth, saying ``if you have to shoot
somebody, shoot me.'' The shotgun discharged, hitting Joslin in the
chest and killing him. Stoker was arrested and charged with murder in
the first degree.

By now perhaps both have figured out an answer to the question. The
reason I put this entry here is that I immediately thought -- ``he's
stoking the flames of hell!'' Well, not really in those words: if you
pay close attention, you'll notice that thoughts aren't necessarily
verbal. But mainly I thought, this should go in the glossary. Where?
Since you're going to read the glossary straight through anyway, you
shouldn't mind particularly where. It's not as if I interrupted the
train of thought you had about Stevenson that you didn't want to forget
when you read about Stone, huh?

And now for something completely related. Previous laureates are an
important outside source of Nobel prize nominations. That doesn't work
so well with the Darwin
Awards, partly because they are so often awarded posthumously.
(Only the living may be nominated for a Nobel, although posthumous
awards are allowed.) I have a candidate or two for the Darwin.

Okay, update on that. Darwin Awards has considered my submission and
informs me that ``unfortunately'' -- oh, no! Rejected! I missed the
cut. Not good enough for the Darwin's high standards of low inteligense. The
``moderators'' (their
scores may still be on-line) were blasé, dismissive, and univocal
(scored ``Definitely Toss''), and frankly cruel. What have they got
against alcohol-assisted stupidity!? After all, it takes some native
stupidity to get staggeringly drunk! I'm sorry, I---I'm feeling a bit
low now. Rejection is so hard! It's so belittling to have one's
submission turned down without a second thought. I mean really--what
qualifies them to decide what is deeply stupid? Are they stupid
or something? Pthah! Stupidity stumbles onward! Real stupidity will
triumph in the end.

Fred Stone played the Scarecrow in the first theatrical production
(1902) of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900). According to
Mark Evan Swartz's Oz Before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939,
(Baltimore and London: JHU Pr., 2003), p. 71, Stone

... took great pride in his ability to remain absolutely still for the
duration of Dorothy's song, which often included several encores. One
reviewer noted that ``when Mr. Stone is first lifted on the stage and
leaned against the stile very few believe that the figure is that of a
live man. They think it to be a rag dummy, a veritable scarecrow, and
nearly all of those in the audience who are witnessing the extravaganza
for the first time are convinced that this manikin will presently be
replaced, to the accompaniment of some hocus-pocus, by the real man so
essential to the play. Thus, when Dorothy rubs the magic ring and the
figure exhibits signs of life there is a gasp of astonishment all over
the theatre.''

Fred Stone wrote an autobiography entitled Rolling Stone (NY:
McGraw-Hill, Whittlesey House, 1945). There (p. 133) he described his
difficulties in the premiere, when he spent eighteen minutes with his
weight balanced on the side of his ankle. Only the prolonged applause
of the surprised audience gave time, as he leaned on Anna Laughlin's
Dorothy, to lose the numbness so he could perform his dance.

The town where, in July 1994, Connecticut state troopers raided a
vacant storefront to seize plants they thought were marijuana, but
which turned out to be oregano, apple mint, and other herbs hung out to
dry.

A sports columnist with the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.
(At least as of mid-2009.)

Nathan STRANGE

A young man from England who became the first European to train as
a sumo wrestler in Japan. (This was some
time before 2002.) He left the program after a year.

John F. STREET

A former city council president of Philadelphia,
PA, Street was elected mayor in 1999 and
reelected in 2003. By law the mayor is limited to two four-year terms,
so after January 7, 2008, he was out on the street. (He was succeeded
by Michael Nutter. I know Pennsylvania is famous for crazy place
names, but this is ridiculous.)

A German mathematician who worked on the theory of invariant
ternary forms, spherical trigonometry, and hypercomplex numbers.
I don't know how he came by a French given name and an English surname;
he was born in Coburg in the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, so there's an
English connection of sorts (see UK entry for
some clarification).

A Colombian prostitute currently (April 2012) at the center of an
scandal involving a US security detail. The accused men -- 12 Secret
Service agents and 11 members of the military
-- were in Cartagena, Colombia, to protect President Obama at an
OAS meeting April 14-15. They arrived some
time before the president, and were replaced and sent back stateside
hours after the president's arrival late on Friday the 13th.

Apparently some members of the security detail hired prostitutes;
others have been accused of interfering with an investigation.
Interfering with a criminal investigation is generally illegal (and
often easy to prove), irrespective of whether any crime has been
committed (something Martha Stewart won't forget next time).
Prostitution is legal in parts of Cartagena.

The way the scandal got started is that there was a dispute between
Dania and her customer over her agreed price. (Surprisingly, despite
their usual reflexive allegeds and allegedlies, the US media seemed to
take at face value Miss Suárez's claim that they had agreed on
a price of $800. Journalists can be amazingly naive.) She called the
cops, and the dispute is said to have been settled for about $200. It
does not seem to be disputed that she did call the cops, so I suppose
this all took place in a part of Cartagena where this sort of thing is
legal. (Indeed, failure to pay for an illegal act is unlikely to be a
crime, since contracts for illegal activities are not enforceable,
though the IRS may still seek its cut. Still, it's not a good
situation to find oneself in, if the verbal contract itself was
criminal.) One week later, about half of the accused Secret Service
men have been more or less involuntarily separated from their jobs,
and the investigation continues.

In Spanish,Dania is pronounced
like daña. (There might be a distinction in some
dialects, but it would be an exceedingly fine one.) Daña
means `she harms' or `he harms.' (Or `it harms.' Spanish is a
pro-drop language; a third-person singular pronoun is implied by the
verb form.)

(Incidentally, Cartagena is the Spanish name of Carthage -- transfered
to the New World in the usual way.)

An author of, or more precisely the text content-provider for,
illustrated books about mammals.

The Book of the Unicorn.

Year of the Horse (May 2003) and Year of the
Goat (May 2003).

The Boris Vallejo Portfolio, Superheroes: The Heroic
Visions of Boris Vallejo and Julie
Bell, Hard Curves: The Fantasy Art of Julie Bell, and
similar books in which human animals are depicted
with their teats at the very least discernible.

Oh, alright, he also did stuff like Year of the Dragon: Legends
& Lore (May 2003). It's perfectly understandable, of course,
that he did text for The Book of Sea Monsters and for other
books illustrated by Bob Eggleton, who naturally draws reptiles,
dragons, birds, and hybrids of these.

Mr. Superman, 62 at the time, and his wife Alice, reported a house
invasion. I happened to see this in the Los Angeles Times of
March 11, 1976, in a tiny item on page B2. (No, I was looking for
something else.) They were at home in Long Beach, California, with a
visiting friend (Martin Cohn, 24, of Santa Barbara), when two ``grubby
looking'' armed men burst through the door and bound the three of them
with adhesive tape. The robbers took $4000 in cash and $5300 in
jewelry. After they left, according to the version of one reporter
(writing for some publication whose morgue I don't have access to),
Superman called police after belatedly bursting his bonds faster than a
speeding bullet. Must've been a bad-krypronite day.

I wonder if this is the same Michael Superman who was a ``Fuller brush
[door-to-door sales]man'' in the Los Angeles area 20 years before. Art
Ryon had a jokey column in the LAT entitled ``Ham on Ryon.'' The lead
item on Nov. 11, 1957, reported this (p. B5). In December 2011, there
was an attorney Martin Cohn practicing in Santa Barbara.

Lisa Lombardi wrote an article entitled ``Don't say this on a first
date'' that appeared in <yahoo.com> courtesy of <match.com>.
She asserted that ``most of us know'' the big no-no topics like felony
record. She wanted to dig deeper: ``But what about the more subtle
subjects you're best not broaching right off the bat? We polled both
experts and real men and women about the other deal-breakers...''

One of the ``real men'' she quoted in the article was ``Chris Suttile,
a single guy in Chicago.'' The subtlety he was quoted as an authority
for was that of not talking about plans to have children. (I believe
hurried discussions of contraception may be permitted, however.)
Anyway, sottile and sutil are `subtle' in Modern Italian
and Spanish, resp. I haven't the time to check now, but if there isn't
some Mediterranean speech (probably an Italian variety) in which
suttile means or meant `subtle,' I'll eat my
granola.

I'm not sure if this is a pseudonym. Another person quoted is ``Maria
Amor of San Diego,'' but the rest have unremarkable names.

Jimmy Lee SWAGGART

A blend of swagger and braggart?

He's a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, a singer and piano player like him.
Well, like him in general. Jerry Lee Lewis's career nosedived when it
was revealed that he had married an adolescent cousin. Jimmy Lee
Swaggart's career nosedived when it was discovered (October 1991?) that
he had been patronizing a prostitute.

The US federal judge presiding over civil suits brought in 2002 and
2003 against McDonald's, which claim that McDonald's food has more
calories than one would expect.
We have more on unusual judge names.

Wladyslaw SZPILMAN

A composer of popular songs and a performer on Poland's state radio,
Szpilman wrote The Pianist, basis of Roman Polanski's movie of
the same name. Szpilman is the Polish spelling of a Yiddish name
meaning performer. (In German, Spieler is `player.') To be
precise, Szpilman's memoir was published as Death of a City in
1946, and was republished as The Pianist in 1999, a year before
Szpilman's death. It was made into a movie once, or perhaps better
said twice, before the child-molester grabbed it. The first
version was called Warsaw Robinson. It was suppressed by the
Communist authorities (by the way, there's no more nomen-est-omen irony
in this entry; I'm just adding fiber), who were unhappy with its
unfavorable portrayal of Ukrainians. It was rereleased in an improved
version with Soviet soldiers liberating Warsaw. (There might be some
irony in the timing of that event.)

Noboru TAKESHITA

My friend Yoshi wondered why American newsfaces always pronounced
this Japanese prime minister's surname ``tah-keh-shta.'' The
normal Japanese pronunciation has even stress, and the vowel after
sh is not elided. It's interesting that the effort to sanitize the
name in English led to the introduction of a consonant cluster (sht)
that is more unusual in English than in Japanese. [The sequence
shuta, as in shutaisei (`identity'), is pronounced with a
u that ranges from weak to virtually absent.]

In 1987, Takeshita and two other close supporters of Kakuei Tanaka --
Shin Kanemaru and Ichiro Ozawa -- took over control of Kaku-san's
machine. [It was an essentially typical patronage-and-power political
machine. Goodies for the folks back home included roads and bridges,
and getting the route of the bullet train to go through his district.
Tanaka was Japan's Finance Minister (1962-1965) and became Prime
Minister in 1972. The Lockheed bribery scandal forced Tanaka out of
office in 1974, but he maintained effective control of the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) even as he faced
indictment, trial, conviction, and extended appeals (on those and other
corruption charges). His machine continued to dominate Japan until
1993.]

The troika of Takeshita, Kanemaru and Ozawa staged their internal coup
while Tanaka, in addition to his legal troubles, was ill. Takeshita
became PM in 1987, but resigned under
pressure due to scandals in 1989. He was arguably Japan's worst
post-WWII PM (a distinction for which there
is substantial competition).

(FWIW, Kanemaru had become the new don in 1987, a role he played until
he was arrested for tax evasion in 1992. That left only Ozawa, who
turned reformer, and for the first time in 1993 the LDP lost a national
election.)

(Interestingly, Tanaka rose to the top of Japanese politics despite
having only an elementary-school education. Most Japanese PM's have
been college graduates -- many from the University of Tokyo, Japan's
most prestigious university. On the other hand, Taro Aso (LDP), who
served as PM from September 2008 to September 2009, came to be
ridiculed for misreading common
kanji in his own speeches. His
given name Taro became a schoolyard epithet meaning `stupid.' Taro is
a common given name, so this likely won't last.)

As explained at the NFN entry, that's
now legally his entire name. Teller is the half of the off-kilter
performing duo Penn and
Teller who never or almost never speaks.

Eugene TERRE'BLANCHE

He founded a white supremacist party of South
Africa, the AWB, and was its leader
until his assassination in 2010. (In news reports over the years, his
surname appeared in the forms Terreblanche, TerreBlanche, and
Terre'Blanche. I guess the former are regularizations for the latter.)

Georgia TESTA

Executive secretary of the Aristotelian Society (a UK society of philosophy so clever it'll make
your head hurt, and not even in a good way). Testa is
Italian for `head.'

The given name Lionel, be it noted, is from a medieval
diminutive of the Middle English nickname Lion or the Old French
name Léon, according to Hanks and Hodges.
[I think the accent is a modern innovation, though.]

He wrote a book entitled The Science of Crystallization:
Macroscopic Phenomena and Defect Generation (1991). P.W. Bridgman
developed some of the most important techniques of crystal growth
(including two which now bear his name -- ``Horizontal Bridgman'' and
``Vertical Bridgman'' technques -- described in Tiller's book). If you
don't use some kind of bridge, then another way to get across the water
is by boat.

The surname is a contraction of Torre quemada, Spanish for
burnt tower. Thousands of his victims were burned ``at the stake'' --
a tower of fire. The Catholic Encyclopedia contains an evil entry
describing his activities in defense of the one true faith:

``Whether Torquemada's ways of ferreting out and punishing heretics
were justifiable is a matter that has to be decided not only by
comparison with the penal standard of the fifteenth century, but also,
and chiefly, by an inquiry into their necessity for the preservation of
Christian Spain.''

In 2000, Pope John Paul II apologized and said it wouldn't happen again.

Madelyne Gorman TOOGOOD

A woman who slapped and punched her four-year-old daughter in the
parking lot of a department store on September 13, 2002. Before
beating the child inside the SUV, she
looked around apparently to see if anyone was watching. But she was
caught anyway. When she turned herself in to Mishawaka,
Indiana, police on September 21 to face
felony battery charges, she said she made ``a mistake.'' Of course:
she forgot about the department-store surveillance camera.

Robert TOOLS

In July 2001, Tools became the first person to receive the AbioCor
artificial heart (manufactured by Abiomed Inc. of Danvers,
Massachusetts). He died five months after the surgery. (The AbioCor
is not the first artificial heart by a long shot, but it is the first
to be completely internal: it's the size of a softball and
battery-powered, and no wires or tubes protrude through the skin.)

The English word organ is derived from the Greek word
organon, which means `tool.'

Dr. TOOTHACRE

This fellow practiced dentistry in South Bend for a number of
years, I am assured by Chuck and Mary. I think he must have retired
some time ago; detailed information about him is not readily available
on the internet at this time. Since I live in the South Bend area, I
suppose I ought to scrounge up some details for the higher good. Mary
also says she once worked with a Fred Trout at the Bodine Fish
Hatchery (a salmon and trout hatchery; see
BSFH.

There is a website
<http://toothacre.com/>
``[f]or resources and information on Arm pains and Pain'' including
toothache. They also have surname links. I feel like I've been set up
for a trip to the Twilight Zone.

A conservative politician in Ontario. The name is such an
egregious instance of nomen est omen that by the time he was
elected leader of the PC party in September 2004, it no longer merited
a joke. The conservative party (name as of 2008: Progressive
Conservatives) was disappointed in the 2007 provincial elections (no, I
don't recall any details). Many expected or wanted him to offer his
resignation shortly afterwards, but he didn't. Ever since then, Tory's
leadership of the Ontario party has been described with words like
``embattled.'' The party will hold a convention in London on February
23, 2008, a couple of weeks from this writing, but I probably won't
come back and update this entry. It seems no one else has wanted the
job enough to challenge him for it, and he's planning to hang on with a
bare majority in an up-or-down vote called a ``leadership review,''

Defense lawyer for William Jefferson (not W.J. Clinton, just W.J.).
Back when he was a US congressman, William Jefferson was caught on
video with his hands in the metaphorical cookie jar. Specifically, the
FBI taped W.J. accepting a briefcase with
$100,000 at a Pentagon City parking lot. The money was supposed to be
used to bribe the Nigerian Vice President. How appropriate.

William Jefferson's nickname when he was a congressman (and a member of
the House Ways and Means Committee) was ``Dollar Bill.'' Several
members of his former staff are in prison after pleading guilty to
charges of conspiracy. A businessman has already pleaded guilty to
bribing him. It's reported that there are tapes of W.J. soliciting
bribes. It would appear that the feds have the goods on him, but what
seems likely to really ice the case -- the icing on the cake, so to
speak -- was the discovery of $90,000 of that $100,000 in a
nonmetaphorical freezer at W.J.'s D.C.-area residence. The money (in
marked $100's) had been divided up into chunks, wrapped in aluminum
foil, and stuffed into nonmetaphorical but possibly symbolic boxes of
Boca burgers and Pillsbury pie crusts. They say the four-and-twenty
blackbirds were a political metaphor, but exculpatory stories about
that green are even harder to swallow.

Trout are famous for swimming against the stream and almost dying in
the effort, but this case may require more than your
run-of-the-water-mill fish ladder. At the start of his opening
statement on June 16, 2009, Robert Trout remarked to the jury, ``I
almost think I should begin with a joke about cold cash or frozen
assets.'' It'll be a historic tragedy if it turns out that the freezer
didn't have any fish. I hope full details come out during the trial.
(Boca burgers are ersatz meat made from milk and vegetables, and
probably taste better than paper. US paper money is printed on an
ersatz ``currency paper'' that is about 25% linen and
75% cotton, plus some red and blue synthetic fibers, but no one has
claimed that those $100 bills were also counterfeit, despite the unreal
safebox.) At the start of the trial, it looks like the defense is
going to be that when he wasn't drunk or making inadequately documented
and implausible but perfectly legal transactions, W.J. was, okay, doing
a lot of things that were tasteless, maybe even unkosher, but not
quite, technically, letter-of-the-law illegal. Sure, you'd have better
odds against dam-riding grizzlies, but you can't always have your
choice of venue.

(Just for balance, and not to have egg-beaters on my face in case of
acquittal, I should point out that despite how bad a lot of W.J.'s
videotaped actions apparently look, the prosecution has its own
obstacles. For one thing, sting operations arouse some skepticism in
juries, and the feds' original star witness, the woman who gave W.J.
that $100,000, will not be testifying for the prosecution. No reason
for this decision has been made public. It does prevent the
prosecution from introducing into evidence unrecorded conversations
between her and W.J., but a lot of their conversations were recorded.
Another problem for the prosecution is that W.J.'s alleged crimes are
not simple quid pro quo bribery, but rather a form of influence
peddling. Essentially, he traded on his connections in West Africa,
offering to grease the skids for business transactions with money to be
funneled through companies owned by his family.)

The first West Asian country to suffer fatal cases of bird flu in
humans (in 2006).

Jeffrey UNDERCOFFER

A Secret Service agent. (Testified July 17, 1996 before House
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, along with John
Libonati, director of the [executive branch] Office of Inspection
and Congressional Affairs, and fellow Secret Service Agent Arnold
Cole.)

Undercoffer was assigned by the White
House to review FBI background files
on aides seeking permanent White House passes.

UNO

Uno is a dog, specifically a beagle, though he does resemble 2008
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. He (Uno) competed in
the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York City's Madison Square
Garden in February 2008. On February 12 he came in at numero
uno in the hound group. He was the first beagle since 1939 to win
the hound group and thus reach the wonderfully portentious-sounding
``final ring of seven.'' (Huckabee lost all his contests on February
12.) The next day he (Uno) won ``best in show.'' It was the first
time in the 102-year history of the competition that a beagle had won
it all.

KEITH URBAN

A country singer. The irony of the surname is obvious; the
possible appropriateness of the given name not. Keith was a
Scottish surname before it began to be used as a given name. It
referred to lands in East Lothian that bore that name, probably derived
from a Celtic word meaning, appropriately, `wood.' A wood is country
enough. Then again, maybe it was destined to refer to the fact that he
got Nicole Kidman with child, years after Tom Cruise gave up trying.

Roger Valid's 1981 book, Mechanics of Continuous Media and
Analysis of Structures, sounds like an engineering book, and
indeed, Dr. Valid is among other things an ``[e]ngineer graduate of the
École Centrale de Paris,'' according to the title page. And
in engineering one is not concerned so much with precise validity as
with robust reliability. But alarm bells go off in the mind as one
reads Valid's preface, which begins with this claim: ``This is a course
on Mechanics and Mathematics.'' What's he trying to pull?

As W.T. Koiter explains in the introduction, ``Professor Valid [uses]
modern coordinate-free analysis in the mechanics of continuous media.
The approach is typical of a French school of applied mathematics and
engineering science. Professor Germain's eloquent recommendation to
engineers in his preface to the original French edition of this work
therefore applies even more strongly outside France.''

Prof. Germain (in the ``foreword'' of the English edition) is concerned
because ``the reader who takes up the book without being familiar with
the concepts and notations that Roger Valid handles so masterfully will
find this ... perhaps a little disconcerting at first.'' Germain's
task is to convice this reader that the mathematics is germane to his
problems, and that Valid's is a valid approach to his problems.

(Don't tell me I'm stretching things too far. The book is all about
elasticity!)

Dr. John W. VALLEY

A professor of geology and geophysics at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison.

VECTOR

At the end of the 1950's, San Francisco emerged as the center of
the US counterculture, when that counterculture was the Beat
Generation. Increasing police raids on gay bars, peaking in 1960, and
action by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission to revoke the bars'
licenses, led to the largest homosexual-rights movement in US history.
That movement had an organization called the Society for Individual
Rights (I'm not aware that it was abbreviated SIR) and a periodical
called Vector.

Twenty years later, San Francisco became one of the centers in the
epidemic of AIDS, whose spread was
facilitated by gay bars. A vector, in biology, is a
disease-transmitting organism (as opposed to a vehicle, which is
inanimate).

SKIP VIRGIN

A viral immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in
St. Louis. Virgin and his colleagues have conducted studies which
demonstrate that infection with certain herpes-like viruses can
improve immunity to dangerous diseases like plague (at least if you're
a lab mouse). The work is described in the May 17, 2007, issue of the
journal Nature.

Ngan Thi BICH Vo

A waitress at the Hawaii Cafe, a nightclub in Garden Grove,
California. Vo, 20, was at work there on the evening of Monday, August
16, 2004. Some time after 11 PM, she called her boyfriend, who was at
another nightclub. According to Garden Grove Police Lt. Mike
Handfield, Vo told him she felt two customers had insulted her by
tugging on her skirt and trying to flirt with her. She was very upset,
and apparently she ``asked him to intervene.'' Later the two men,
regulars at the nightclub, bought her a rose and apologized. It was
apparently too little or too late. Around 1 AM, a man entered the
crowded restaurant, walked past four tables, and shot the two men at
point-blank range.

Das Volk is German for `the people,' but has a narrower, somehow
more political connotation than `people' can have: das Volk
refers to an ethnos, a particular people connected by a common
culture or nationality. In English, you can use the null article to
remove this particularity: a phrase beginning ``people say'' or
``people are'' is clearly general, and if a particular group is meant,
the restriction must be indicated by context. To get the same
generalizing effect in German, you have to switch words and begin
``die Leute sagen'' or ``die Leute sind.''

(The German word Volk is cognate with the English word
folk, of course, and they are pronounced similarly. In
particular, the German v is pronounced like an English f,
and the vowels are close enough, considering the variation in vowel
pronunciation across dialects. The main difference is in the l,
which is clearly articulated in German, but ``dark'' in English.)

René VOLTZ

A researcher into the properties of electrons in solids. For
example, he wrote ``Thermalization of Subexcitation Electrons in Dense
Molecular Media,'' chapter 3 of Excess Electrons in Dielectric
Media, edd. Christiane Ferradini, Jean-Paul Jay-Gerin (CRC Press,
1991), pp. 75-104.

I'm convinced that the news media, as well as people living in
surrounding communities, have been mispronouncing its name.

Oh, the 100,000 good people or so of Waco want you to know that they're
only responsible for Baylor University (a/k/a Harvard of the Southern
Baptists, also ``Thee University'').
Still, if you go the seat of McLennan County, you might as well also
visit the former site of the Mount Carmel compound of the Branch
Davidians in nearby Elk (five miles east of the Waco city limits) or
the ranch of US President George W. Bush in Crawford (ten miles west of
the city limits). Then again, better not.

Waco also has an M&M candies facility and a Haircolor
Headquarters. ``Headquarters'' -- nice pun, but overly
militaristic overtones and highlights.

Comedian Steve Martin grew up in Waco -- need I say more? Okay, more
at the Hfuhruhurr entry.

Chairman and CEO of
GM's North American Division from April 2005
until March 2009, when he was fired by the president of the US, of all
people.

A wagon is a wheeled vehicle without the power to propel itself. That
seems pretty significant right there. A wagoner is a wagon driver or,
as the OED has for its first definition s.v.:
``[o]ne who has charge of a wagon as driver.''

The name Richard was introduced into Britain by the Normans. It
is composed of the roots ric (`power') and hard (`brave,
strong').

Yes, fortune is fleeting, so you should buy insurance. Rich Was is
(you knew I had to write that) a
State Farm insurance agent in South Bend, Indiana. "Rich Was" is
what I see on all the signs and his unsolicited mail, etc., but he
signs a longer name that ends in ``Jr.'' So Rich Was was and is.

The first mayor of Washington, D.C. Also the first black mayor of
Washington, DC. But not the first black mayor of a city in the US
South, because Washington didn't have a mayor until 1975, following the
District
of Columbia Home Rule Act, which was enacted in 1973. The first
black mayor of Chicago, elected in 1983, was Harold Washington.

On May 1, 2010, a water main break in Weston, Massachusetts, caused
64 million gallons of water to be lost from fresh-water reservoirs that
supply Watertown. In order to continue providing water for
firefighting and sewage (doesn't this remind you of Gulliver in
Lilliput?), the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority had to
substitute untreated water from backup reservoirs and issued a
boil-water order.

Historic Watertown, on the Charles River about 6 miles northwest of
Boston, has a population of almost 33,000 and thus represents more
than 1% of the population served by the main and affected by the
boil-water order. What, you were expecting maybe 2%? See
the Detroit entry.

One week later, it is believed that the break was caused by the failure
of a 15-foot-long, one-ton metal ``clamp'' (a/k/a a Brico coupling).
It affected Boston and 29 of its surrounding communities, including
Brookline and Swampscott.

His given name is pronounced ``EE-veh-lin'' or ``EE-v'lin.''
(Waugh rhymes with law.) Born in 1903 the second son of Arthur Waugh,
brother of Alec Waugh; he was the father of Auberon Waugh. They
should have stuck with A-names. (In fact, they did:
Evelyn Waugh was christened Arthur Evelyn
St. John Waugh.) In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardner. Not surprisingly,
it didn't work out. In 1930, Evelyn and
Evelyn Waugh were divorced. (Many who oppose gay marriage on
religious grounds like the slogan ``God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve.'' Had to mention that.)

Hey, hey, Paula!

In 1937 he married a woman whose last name was Herbert. Two years
later, Laura (neé Herbert) and Evelyn were not divorced.
At this time he was Catholic. It's good he had waited until 1930 to
convert: in those days, it was pretty hard to get an annulment -- it
was until death did you part (and then I suppose you could be a
bigamist in the afterlife).

He seems to have had a bit of a self-destructive impulse. In 1925 he
tried committing suicide by swimming out to sea, but he was stung by a jellyfish and turned back.
In 1939, Waugh (full name Evelyn Arthur Saint John Waugh) used his
political connections to get into the Royal Marines, and eventually
transferred to an Army commando unit.

Author of The Christian Agnostic (Nashville and New York:
Abingdon Press, 1965). He seems to have been unusually open-minded.
When you move your library, arresting volumes sometimes fall out.
Maybe some day I'll skim this one more thoroughly.

Weeks was editor of The
Atlantic Monthly for many years. He started as an assistant
editor for the journal in 1924. So far as I can tell from the
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, his first published
article (in 1927) appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. That year
also, when he was still a reader and assistant editor, he recommended
Ernest Hemingway's short story ``Fifty Grand'' for publication. The
story, which had been rejected by The Saturday Evening Post,
Cosmopolitan, Collier's and Scribners, was Hemingway's first
in a national publication.

He was editor of the Atlantic Monthly Press (the magazine's
book-publishing arm) from 1928 to 1937, and moved back to the magazine
in 1938 as its ninth editor and, by the time he retired in 1966, its
longest-serving one. After his retirement in 1966, Weeks served as
consultant and senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly Press until 1987
and continued writing. After retiring from this active retirement, he
was editor emeritus at the Monthly and Press. He came in to work until
two days before he died (Saturday, March 11, 1989) age 91.

Weiner up-ended and probably ended (so it seems as of this writing,
June 9, 2011) his career as a member of the US Congress (D-NY) by
misdirecting a photograph of his tumescent member, publishing it to a
large group of Tweet readers rather than sending it privately to his
intended destination, a woman other than the one he was married to.
(No, she wasn't his urologist either.) His surname is retrospectively
ominous in both German and English.

In English, of course, (you already know everything articulated in this
and the next paragraph) the Wiener surname is pronounced ``WEE-ner,''
presumably because in English, ei and ie are not usually distinguished
except as misspellings. (That is, if either order is correct in the
spelling of some word, then a spelling with the other order usually
represents a recognizable misspelling rather than some distinct word or
intended pronunciation distinction. There's a
rule about it. Typically, the exceptions are recent foreign loans
like lei.) In fact, weiner is a common-enough misspelling of
wiener that it might be deemed an acceptable variant. (For example,
googling on <> (the plus
sign mostly prevents Google from returning pages that only have the
weiner spelling) yields ``[a]bout 3,880,000''
ghits, while doing the same with weiner
yields ``[a]bout 1,480,000.'')

Weiner is an informal name for a hot dog (a/k/a frankfurter), and is
also, for obvious reasons, a (somewhat childish) euphemism for
penis. (Yes, yes, I do parenthesize (quite) a lot, and my
parenthesizing of modifiers is almost idiosyncratic. I can't help it
-- I'm a dick.) The various euphemisms and dysphemisms for
penis are also widely used as pejoratives. Under the
circumstances, reportage and comment on the long-drawn-out Weiner story
featured a lot of punning and references to punning (or to the
commenter's meritorious abstinence therefrom, etc.). Even the ``wee
nerd'' pun gets a few ghits with this story.

In German, wiener (capitalized only as a noun) means `Viennese,'
and wiener Würstchen can be translated literally if
awkwardly as `little Vienna sausage' or `Vienna sausagelet.' In the
usual way, Wiener alone is understood (in appropriate contexts)
to stand for wiener Würstchen. Also in German as in
English, Würstchen, Wiener, and Frankfurter are
among the vulgar synonyms for Penis. (In the German
Sprachraum, a frank is
normally all-pork, while a wiener is pork-and-beef.) In German,
however, ie and ei have different pronunciations and are carefully
distinguished, so the pun on Weiner's name does not work the same way.

Weiner is a common surname in Germany, an old contracted form of
Wagner, which still means `wagon-maker' in southern Germany. There is
an unrelated root in the verb weinen, which means `weep' and is
cognate with the English whine. From this verb one has
Weiner again as a common noun meaning `weeper.'
In the June 7 news conference at which Rep. Weiner first admitted that
it was indeed he who had sent the offending picture, he dabbed
theatrically at his eyes and perhaps shed a genuine tear for his
damaged and endangered political career.

[Obsessive detail, representing some of my research: You won't find
Weiner in most German or German-English dictionaries. The Grimm
has an entry with many examples of its use, however, as well as an
entry for the female form Weinerin. A synonym that usually does
get an entry is Weinende (same form for male and female). One
reason that the common noun Weiner may not get an entry while
Weinende does is that Weiner is regularly formed from the
verb, using the productive ending -er (like whiner from
whine), and German dictionaries tend not to define such regular
derivations unless the meaning or usage is somehow other than what one
would expect. In contrast, a construction from the adverb, like
Geweinde, may or may not be accepted, so an entry for that is
warranted. A possible second reason may be that Geweinde has
become more common than Weiner. (It's hard to tell from ghits:
even if the common noun Weiner were 70 times as common as
Geweinde, it would still represent only 1% of the total Weiner
ghits, most of which are for the surname or misspellings of Wiener.
The inflected forms -- Weiners and Weinern -- are similarly swamped.)
Fwiw, my mom doesn't recognize Geweinde and considers
Weiner the translation of weeper, but she hasn't resided in
Germany since 1938. She does wonder if there is a meaning of
Weiner related to Wein (`wine'). The Grimm managed to
uncover one such instance from the year 1470.]

White House Iraq Group. A task force created by Chief of Staff
Andrew H. Card Jr. in August 2002 and charged, according to the
Washington Post, with the task of 'marketing' the war
in Iraq to the public.

A singer-songwriter who lived the blues. The most celebrated track
from her five-Grammy-winning 2006 album Back To Black was titled
``Rehab.'' In 2007, her press was dominated by her bulimia, violent
drunken fights with her husband and fans, and her problems with drugs
(pot, cocaine, heroin, and more exotic items, in various combinations)
and alcohol. Well-wishers suggested she stick to booze.

On July 23, 2011, she was found in her apartment -- dead at age 27.
Everyone seemed to agree that the Winehouse death had to do with
alcohol... somehow. There were reports that she had gone on (and
perhaps after) a fatal binge, but family and close friends claimed the
opposite: that her doctors had advised her to cut down slowly on her
heavy drinking, but that she could only quit cold turkey. (Not
wild turkey -- to only have quit that would have been
incremental.) The day before she died, her doctor gave her a clean
bill of health. Her parents, boyfriend, and manager all believed she
had died from quitting too abruptly. It gives fresh meaning to
``physical dependence.'' Toxicology results eventially showed that her
blood alcohol level was five times the legal limit for driving. I'm
sure her family and friends would all insist that she wasn't driving at
the time, but the coroner ruled that she died from drinking too much
alcohol.

Compiler and copyright holder of The Wisdom of Sam Ervin
(NYC: Ballantine Books, 1973). A politician
is deemed wise principally for the virtue of expressing forcefully the
opinions one agrees with. Sen. Sam Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.) became famous
as chair of the Senate committee that held hearings on the Watergate
Scandal. Information brought out in those hearings eventually forced
President Richard M. Nixon to resign from
office (the first US president to do so) in 1973. In particular, it came out (initially
in answer to a routine question, in a staff interview with a White
House employee who was to testify) that conversations in the White
House Oval Office (the President's ceremonial and actual office -- how
inconvenient) were secretly recorded.

Ervin became known for the homespun,
common-sense indignation he
expressed at Executive-Branch activities revealed in testimony before
his committee. Conveniently, the president in office was of the
opposite party, posing no partisan restraint on his wit. Ervin was
known primarily for his wit (in the modern sense of humor), and only
secondarily for his wisdom. Bill Wise's book demonstrates in detail
just how imaginatively Ervin expressed his unimaginative opinions.

Whodunit Math Puzzles is a children's book by one Bill Wise
(illustrated by Lucy Corvino). If this is the same Wise, he seems to
have a thing about the intelligence gathered by criminal investigation.

A William Wise wrote the children's book Dinosaurs Forever
(illustrated by Lynn Munsinger). The novel The Tail of the
Dragon was written by Robert L. Wise and William Louis, Jr. Wilson.
Only Wise is credited on the cover. The other fellow, regardless his
connection with the book, is not some Wilson who was named after
William Louis, Jr. It's just amazon.com's weird way with
names. Similarly, Stephen R. Wise has contributed a volume to a
series of books edited by ``William N., Jr. Still.''

Timothy Peter WISEMAN

A much-published classicist,
whose books are copiously footnoted.
See, for example, Catullus and his world: a reappraisal
(Cambridge U. P., 1985). Chapter 1, entitled ``A World Not Ours''
is about the nexus of sex and violence in Roman thinking.

Head of the World Bank from
1995 to 2005. His surname means `Wolf's son.' He has had almost a
child's eagerness to please, becoming a very popular president, at
least within the organization.

They say the child is father to the man. In March 2005, Paul Wolfowitz
was nominated and confirmed as Wolfensohn's successor. Wolfowitz is
a family name equivalent to Wolfensohn, a patronymic constructed using
a Slavic rather than Germanic suffix.
Of course, it's written using the letter w to represent a sound
normally written with a vee in English, because its original
Latin-character spelling was in German and Polish. In German,
incidentally, the word Witz means `joke,' cognate with English
wit. (I'm sorry, I've exceeded my quota of ``the first time as
tragedy, the second time as farce'' citations. You'll have to find a
more complete description deep inside the
pea entry or the
Charlie's Angels entry.)

With the nomination of Wolfensohn to replace Lewis Preston as president
of the World Bank in March 1995, US Pres. Clinton disappointed
environmentalist and development groups that had hoped he would pick
W. Bowman (``Bo'') Cutter, a top White
House economic advisor. (Since you ask, Cutter was deputy head of
the White House National Economic Council, with responsibility for
trade policy and international economic issues.) Wolfensohn, who had
little experience in the development field, made the case that he would
be a cutter of superfluous World Bank staff. (Sorry, I can't cut out
the superfluous punning stuff.) The following May 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that ahead of his
June 1 start, ``fear'' gripped the World Bank: ``he is seen at the
9,000-employee institution as a cost cutter.'' Looks now like he went
native.

The wolf was native to the forests of Europe and (or including)
Britain, and was a common basis for names. Wolfgang is still a
common German given name. The Latin word
for wolf was `lupus,' whence Spanish lobo and the English
surname Lovell (the -ell is a diminutive ending). A
Lovell is mentioned in this glossary in connection with Odyssey.

Incidentally, another candidate passed over for the WB post in 1995 was Lawrence Summers, US
Treasury Dept. undersecretary for
international affairs and a former World Bank chief economist. His
cause had been backed some US Treasury and senior World Bank officials.
I don't know how disappointed Summers was at the time, but he went on
to become a president anyway -- of Harvard University. His tenure
there was characterized by sober attempts to just, you know, like,
suggest that maybe some tenets of political correctness might
not, ah, be entirely, uh, fact, and by his subsequent desparate and
spineless apologies. After five years as president, he resigned (as he
announced on February 21, 2006) or was forced out, effective the end of
the 2005-6 academic year.

But Gerard Baker is not. Gerard Baker is better known as the US editor
of the Times of London, but the following is from a column he
contributed to the American political magazine The Weekly
Standard, May 22, 2006: ``...Prescott [see
Prezza], 67, a brutish former seaman with
a capacity to mangle the English language that makes George
W. Bush sound like Wordsworth, had been
exposed as having an affair with a jaunty 43-year-old lass who worked
in his office.''

Author of The New Testament and the People of God, (London:
SPCK, 1992) and (Minneapolis: Fortress Pr.,
1992), and generally speaking a famous and respected name (I mean in
the synecdochal sense) in Biblical
studies. The N.T. in Wright's name stands for Nicholas Thomas, but it
is abbreviated on the covers of his books.

As of summer 2002, he's working on a series of Bible commentaries, one
for each book of the bible. These were originally intended to replace,
but will now be published along side of, the old Barclay commentaries.

Dennis H. WRONG

Author of Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses (Harper/Colophon,
1979). The book ``presents a detailed analysis of the elusive concept
of power in social theory...'' What more would you need to know?

Malcolm X

For apt nomen-est-omen information on this individual, as
well as X. J. Kennedy, see the
chiasmus entry.

VIKTOR Yanukovych and VIKTOR Yushchenko

The two candidates in the Ukrainian
presidential election of 2004 who won the most votes (but no majority).
Both claimed victory in the subsequent run-off.

``Tanya
Zuckerbrot, MS, RD is a
nutritionist and the creator of `The F-Factor Diet,' an innovative
nutritional program she has used for more than ten years to provide
hundreds of her clients with all the tools they need to achieve easy
weight loss and maintenance, and improved health and well-being.''
She has a regular feature on the Fox News Health Blog called
``Tanya's Tasty Tips.''

Zuckerbrot is a German word literally meaning `sweet bread,' but
like the English sweetmeat, it applies to any sweet delicacy --
candy, candied fruit, sweet pastry, whatever. Just like the word
sweetmeat,Zuckerbrot has gone somewhat out of use.
Konfekt and confectionary are more common. The English
word sweetbread, of course, is
something else again.

Zuckerbrot survives as a common surname and also in the stock
phrase ``Zuckerbrot und Peitsche,'' meaning `carrot and stick.'
(Peitsche, as you recall from reading Nietzsche, means `whip.')
The German version strikes me as more pointed.

The modern German word for sugar is Zucker (see
preceding entry), and Zuker
is a variant of this (probably from before orthographic regularization,
but possibly from transliteration into English).

Charles Zuker is a neuroscientist at the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute. In 2001, he announced an important research finding
concerning sugar: while there are more than 30 genes coding for bitter
receptors in human taste buds, and a corresponding large number of
different bitter receptors, there is only a single gene and a single
kind of receptor for the sweet taste. Biochemists at Senomyx, a
company cofounded by Zuker, eventually demonstrated that the two
subunits of the sweet receptor each has a separate binding site. (This
accounts for a synergy e